Prospects for the Determination ofH0through Observation of Multiply Imaged Supernovae in Galaxy Cluster Fields

We assess the possibility of determining the Hubble constant H_0 by measuringtime delays between multiple images of supernovae gravitationally lensed byrich clusters of galaxies and combining these delay measurements with detailedcluster-potential models based on other lensing constraints. Such a lensingdetermination of H_0 would be complementary to those obtained from galaxy-QSOlensing studies, and could potentially be better calibrated. We show thatrelatively low-redshift (z approximately 0.2), significantly ellipticalclusters have appreciable lensing cross sections for observable image pairingswith tractable time delays on the order of a few years despite large lensingmass scales. We find that a targeted search for such image pairs would be asignificant undertaking for current observatories, but that it would beappropriate for a facility such as the proposed Large-aperture Synoptic SurveyTelescope.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, AASTeX; revised and expanded, accepted to Ap