Photometric Type Ia supernova surveys in narrow-band filters

We study the characteristics of a narrow-band Type Ia supernova (SN) survey through simulations based on the upcoming Javalambre Physics of the accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey. This unique survey has the capabilities of obtaining distances, redshifts and the SNtype from a single experiment thereby circumventing the challenges faced by the resource-intensive spectroscopic follow-up observations. We analyse the flux measurements signal-to-noise ratio and bias, the SN typing performance, the ability to recover light-curve parameters given by the SALT2 model, the photometric redshift precision from Type Ia SN light curves and the effects of systematic errors on the data. We show that such a survey is not only feasible but may yield large Type Ia SN samples (up to 250 SNe at z < 0.5 per month of search) with low corecollapse contamination (~1.5 per cent), good precision on the SALT2 parameters (average σ<inf>mB</inf> = 0.063, σ<inf>x1</inf> = 0.47 and σ<inf>c</inf> = 0.040) and on the distance modulus (average σμ = 0.16, assuming an intrinsic scatter σ<inf>int</inf> = 0.14), with identified systematic uncertainties σ<inf>sys</inf> ≲ 0.10σ<inf>stat</inf>. Moreover, the filters are narrow enough to detect most spectral features and obtain excellent photometric redshift precision of σ<inf>z</inf> = 0.005, apart from ~2 per cent of outliers. We also present a few strategies for optimizing the survey's outcome. Together with the detailed host galaxy information, narrow-band surveys can be very valuable for the study of SN rates, spectral feature relations, intrinsic colour variations and correlations between SN and host galaxy properties, all of which are important information for SN cosmological applications. © 2014 The Authors.