CONSTRAINING TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA MODELS: SN 2011fe AS A TEST CASE

By Friedrich K. Röpke, M. Kromer, I. Seitenzahl, Rüdiger Pakmor, Stuart A. Sim, Stefan Taubenberger, F. Ciaraldi-Schoolmann, W. Hillebrandt, G. Aldering, P. Antilogus and 35 more. 2012

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The nearby supernova SN 2011fe can be observed in unprecedented detail. Therefore, it is an important test case for Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) models, which may bring us closer to understanding the physical nature of these objects. Here, we explore how available and expected future observations of SN 2011fe can be used to constrain SN Ia explosion scenarios. We base our discussion on three-dimensional simulations of a delayed detonation in a Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf and of a violent merger of two white dwarfs (WDs)—realizations of explosion models appropriate for two of the most widely discussed progenitor channels that may give rise to SNe Ia. Although both models have their shortcomings in reproducing details of the early and near-maximum spectra of SN 2011fe obtained by the Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory), the overall match with the observations is reasonable. The level of agreement is slightly better for the merger, in particular around maximum, but a clear preference for one model over the other is still not justified. Observations at late epochs, however, hold promise for discriminating the explosion scenarios in a straightforward way, as a nucleosynthesis effect leads to differences in the 55Co production. SN 2011fe is close enough to be followed sufficiently long to study this effect.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6902e4fb7e4e1abbd76df3f970780d7b17e7a60b

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Citations in the corpus

3D deflagration simulations leaving bound remnants: a model for 2002cx-like Type Ia supernovae (2012, result): “3) compared to that of models of normal SNe Ia (e.g. Nomoto, Thielemann, & Yokoi 1984, Röpke et al. 2012).”
Three-dimensional pure deflagration models with nucleosynthesis and synthetic observables for type ia supernovae (2013, methodology): “Alternatively, perhaps strong deflagrations always trigger a DDT, leading to brighter events: our DDT models with Nk ∼ 100 have been shown to compare well with normal SNe Ia (Röpke et al. 2012; S13; Sim et al. 2013).”
HELIUM-IGNITED VIOLENT MERGERS AS A UNIFIED MODEL FOR NORMAL AND RAPIDLY DECLINING TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2013, background): “At the same time, recent first-principle three-dimensional simulations of violent mergers of two CO WDs reproduce subluminous and normal SNe Ia well (Pakmor et al. 2010, 2012b; Röpke et al. 2012).”
Three-dimensional delayed-detonation models with nucleosynthesis for Type Ia supernovae (2012, methodology): “…have a central density of ρc = 2.9× 109 g cm−3 (M = 1.400 M⊙, R= 1.96× 108 cm), but we also include a low central densityρc = 1.0×109 g cm−3 (M = 1.361 M⊙, R= 1.96× 108 cm) and a high central density ρc= 5.5×109 g cm−3 (M =1.416 M⊙, R=1.96×108 cm) version of the N100 model (Röpke et al. 2012).”
Hubble Space Telescope spectra of the type Ia supernova SN 2011fe: a tail of low-density, high-velocity material with Z < Z⊙ (2013, background): “Although the physics of the transition are still unclear, these models produce explosion energies and abundance stratifications that match SN Ia observations (Mazzali et al. 2007; Tanaka et al. 2011; Röpke et al. 2012).”
Nucleosynthesis in Stars and the Chemical Enrichment of Galaxies (2013, background): “…the observations, Ni is overproduced by Type Ia supernovae at [Fe/H] − 1, but this problem can be solved by tuning the propagation speed of the burning front and the central density of the white dwarf (Iwamoto et al. 1999) or 3D simulations of thermonuclear explosions (e.g., Röpke et al. 2012).”
Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, methodology): “They show that the same two SD and DD models, compared by Röpke et al. (2012) to the optical data for SN 2011fe (see Section 3.3.3, above), could be distinguished by gamma-ray data from these missions.”