Superluminous supernovae: 56Ni power versus magnetar radiation

By L. Dessart, D. John Hillier, R. Waldman, E. Livne, S. Blondin. 2012

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Much uncertainty surrounds the origin of superluminous supernovae (SNe). Motivated by the discovery of the Type Ic SN 2007bi, we study its proposed association with a pair-instability SN (PISN). We compute stellar evolution models for primordial ∼200 M_⊙ stars, simulating the implosion/explosion due to the pair-production instability, and use them as inputs for detailed non-local thermodynamic equilibrium time-dependent radiative transfer simulations that include non-local energy deposition and non-thermal processes. We retrieve the basic morphology of PISN light curves from red supergiant, blue supergiant and Wolf–Rayet (WR) star progenitors. Although we confirm that a progenitor 100 M_⊙ helium core (PISN model He100) fits well the SN 2007bi light curve, the low ratios of its kinetic energy and ^(56)Ni mass to the ejecta mass, similar to standard core-collapse SNe, conspire to produce cool photospheres, red spectra subject to strong line blanketing and narrow-line profiles, all conflicting with SN 2007bi observations. He-core models of increasing ^(56)Ni-to-ejecta mass ratio have bluer spectra, but still too red to match SN 2007bi, even for model He125 – the effect of ^(56)Ni heating is offset by the associated increase in blanketing. In contrast, the delayed injection of energy by a magnetar represents a more attractive alternative to reproduce the blue, weakly blanketed and broad-lined spectra of superluminous SNe. The extra heat source is free of blanketing and is not explicitly tied to the ejecta. Experimenting with an ∼9 M_⊙ WR-star progenitor, initially exploded to yield an ∼1.6 B SN Ib/c ejecta but later influenced by tunable magnetar-like radiation, we produce a diversity of blue spectral morphologies reminiscent of SN 2007bi, the peculiar Type Ib SN 2005bf and superluminous SN 2005ap-like events.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3d91d60b4ec13a8359af2e55a45b481ad1eaec63

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Citations in the corpus

• The Magnetar Model for Type I Superluminous Supernovae. I. Bayesian Analysis of the Full Multicolor Light-curve Sample with MOSFiT (2017, background): “Spectroscopic models of H-poor SN ejecta strongly illuminated from within have been successful in reproducing the early spectra of SLSNe (Dessart et al. 2012; Howell et al. 2013; Mazzali et al. 2016).”
• ANALYTICAL LIGHT CURVE MODELS OF SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE: χ2-MINIMIZATION OF PARAMETER FITS (2013, background): “As recently indicated by the findings of Dessart et al. (2012, 2013), reproducing SLSN LCs alone does not constitute a definitive answer about the nature of a particular event.”
• On the diversity of superluminous supernovae: ejected mass as the dominant factor (2015, methodology): “So far, only Dessart et al. (2012a) have presented calculations of model SLSN spectra based on magnetar radiation.”
• HYDROGEN-POOR SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE AND LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS HAVE SIMILAR HOST GALAXIES (2013, background): “…proposed to be examples of pair-instability SNe (Gal-Yam et al. 2009; Young et al. 2010), but this interpretation is controversial and the events can also be explained in an interaction or magnetar scenario (Dessart et al. 2012; Milisavljevic et al. 2013; Nicholl et al. 2013; McCrum et al. 2014b).”