Supernova Pencil Beam Survey

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) can be calibrated to be good standard candles atcosmological distances. We propose a supernova pencil beam survey that couldyield between dozens to hundreds of SNe Ia in redshift bins of 0.1 up to$z=1.5$, which would compliment space based SN searches, and enable the properconsideration of the systematic uncertainties of SNe Ia as standard candles, inparticular, luminosity evolution and gravitational lensing. We simulate SNe Ialuminosities by adding weak lensing noise (using empirical fitting formulae)and scatter in SN Ia absolute magnitudes to standard candles placed at randomredshifts. We show that flux-averaging is powerful in reducing the combinednoise due to gravitational lensing and scatter in SN Ia absolute magnitudes.The SN number count is not sensitive to matter distribution in the universe; itcan be used to test models of cosmology or to measure the SN rate. The SNpencil beam survey can yield a wealth of data which should enable accuratedetermination of the cosmological parameters and the SN rate, and providevaluable information on the formation and evolution of galaxies. The SN pencil beam survey can be accomplished on a dedicated 4 metertelescope with a square degree field of view. This telescope can be used toconduct other important observational projects compatible with the SN pencilbeam survey, such as QSOs, Kuiper belt objects, and in particular, weak lensingmeasurements of field galaxies, and the search for gamma-ray burst afterglows.Comment: Final version, to appear in ApJ, 531, #2 (March 10, 2000). 22 pages including 5 figures. Improved presentatio