Unifying Type II Supernova Light Curves with Dense Circumstellar Material

By V. Morozova, A. Piro, S. Valenti. 2016

160 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A longstanding problem in the study of supernovae (SNe) has been the relationship between the Type IIP and Type IIL subclasses. Whether they come from distinct progenitors or they are from similar stars with some property that smoothly transitions from one class to another has been the subject of much debate. Here, using one-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic SN models, we show that the multi-band light curves of SNe IIL are well fit by ordinary red supergiants surrounded by dense circumstellar material (CSM). The inferred extent of this material, coupled with a typical wind velocity of , suggests enhanced activity by these stars during the last ~months to ∼years of their lives, which may be connected with advanced stages of nuclear burning. Furthermore, we find that, even for more plateau-like SNe, dense CSM provides a better fit to the first days of their light curves, indicating that the presence of such material may be more widespread than previously appreciated. Here we choose to model the CSM with a wind-like density profile, but it is unclear whether this just generally represents some other mass distribution, such as a recent mass ejection, thick disk, or even inflated envelope material. Better understanding the exact geometry and density distribution of this material will be an important question for future studies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/97e32fc23e44b94014a0409fb5b616bbf38968c0

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. J. Fuller
2. V. Morozova
3. A. Piro
4. S. Valenti
5. B. Metzger

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. J. Fuller
2. V. Morozova
3. A. Piro
4. S. Valenti

Citations in the corpus

• Pre-supernova outbursts via wave heating in massive stars – I. Red supergiants (2017, methodology): “The dense wind can also create early peaks in type II-P (Moriya et al. 2011; Morozova et al. 2017), and can cause the SNe to appear more II-L-like (Moriya & Tominaga 2012).”
• Measuring the Progenitor Masses and Dense Circumstellar Material of Type II Supernovae (2017, methodology): “As in our previous work (Morozova et al. 2017), we use the non-rotating solar-metallicity RSG models from the stellar evolution code KEPLER (Weaver et al. 1978; Woosley & Heger 2007, 2015; Sukhbold & Woosley 2014; Sukhbold et al. 2016).”