Confined dense circumstellar material surrounding a regular type II supernova

By O. Yaron, D. Perley, A. Gal-yam, J. Groh, A. Horesh, Eran Ofek, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, J. Sollerman, C. Fransson, A. Rubin and 24 more. Nature Physics, 2017

269 citations recorded by the source corpus.

With the advent of new wide-field, high-cadence optical transient surveys, our understanding of the diversity of core-collapse supernovae has grown tremendously in the last decade. However, the pre-supernova evolution of massive stars, which sets the physical backdrop to these violent events, is theoretically not well understood and difficult to probe observationally. Here we report the discovery of the supernova iPTF 13dqy = SN 2013fs a mere ∼3 h after explosion. Our rapid follow-up observations, which include multiwavelength photometry and extremely early (beginning at ∼6 h post-explosion) spectra, map the distribution of material in the immediate environment (≲1015 cm) of the exploding star and establish that it was surrounded by circumstellar material (CSM) that was ejected during the final ∼1 yr prior to explosion at a high rate, around 10−3 solar masses per year. The complete disappearance of flash-ionized emission lines within the first several days requires that the dense CSM be confined to within ≲1015 cm, consistent with radio non-detections at 70–100 days. The observations indicate that iPTF 13dqy was a regular type II supernova; thus, the finding that the probable red supergiant progenitor of this common explosion ejected material at a highly elevated rate just prior to its demise suggests that pre-supernova instabilities may be common among exploding massive stars. Type II supernova explosions are common, but our understanding of such events is not complete. Such an event was observed just three hours after the explosion started, providing important information about the early stages.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d0551fb17461953aa3230d6a9d11fceb177b556

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. E. Berger
3. Bing Zhang
4. A. Piro
5. Masaomi Tanaka
6. J. Fuller
7. E. Ramirez-Ruiz
8. S. Valenti

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. J. Fuller
2. A. Piro
3. V. Morozova
4. P. Mazzali
5. S. Valenti
6. Masaomi Tanaka
7. Nozomu Tominaga
8. K. Maeda

Citations in the corpus

• Pre-supernova outbursts via wave heating in massive stars – I. Red supergiants (2017, background): “However, we find that wave heating is a compelling mechanism to produce flash-ionized Type II-P/II-L SNe (e.g. Khazov et al. 2016; Yaron et al. 2017) showing emission lines in early spectra.”
• Measuring the Progenitor Masses and Dense Circumstellar Material of Type II Supernovae (2017, background): “Although we focus on photometric light curves, the presence of a dense CSM around otherwise normal SNeIIP has also been recently suggested by the spectroscopic observations of a number of events (see, e.g., Quimby et al. 2007; Kiewe et al. 2012; Yaron et al. 2017).”
• The fast, luminous ultraviolet transient AT2018cow: extreme supernova, or disruption of a star by an intermediate-mass black hole? (2018, background): “There is no sign of any flash-ionized emission features (e.g., Gal-Yam et al. 2014; Yaron et al. 2017; Khazov et al. 2016).”
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives (2019, background): “…al. 2013b,a, 2014a, 2016; Strotjohann et al. 2015; Nyholm et al. 2017) and in other cases we detect high excitation emission lines, presumably due to the presence of massive circumstellar material around the SN progenitor (e.g., Gal-Yam et al. (2014b); Khazov et al. (2016b); Yaron et al. (2017b)).”