SN 2002cx: The Most Peculiar Known Type Ia Supernova

By Weidong Li, A. Filippenko, Ryan Chornock, E. Berger, P. Berlind, M. Calkins, P. Challis, C. Fassnacht, S. Jha, R. Kirshner and 11 more. 2003

283 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of supernova (SN) 2002cx, which reveal it to be unique among all observed Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). SN 2002cx exhibits an SN 1991T–like premaximum spectrum, an SN 1991bg–like luminosity, and expansion velocities roughly half those of normal SNe Ia. Photometrically, SN 2002cx has a broad peak in the R band and a plateau phase in the I band, and slow late‐time decline. The B−V color evolution is nearly normal, but the V−R and V−I colors are very red. Early‐time spectra of SN 2002cx evolve very quickly and are dominated by lines from Fe‐group elements; features from intermediate‐mass elements (Ca, S, Si) are weak or absent. Mysterious emission lines are observed around 7000 Å at about 3 weeks after maximum brightness. The nebular spectrum of SN 2002cx is also unique, consisting of narrow iron and cobalt lines. The observations of SN 2002cx are inconsistent with the observed spectral/photometric sequence and provide a major challenge to our understanding of SNe Ia. No existing theoretical model can successfully explain all observed aspects of SN 2002cx.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Infectious Diseases

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b373bc89fa27b12847b479dcb9b991d2470244c6

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. A. Filippenko
2. S. Smartt
3. N. Smith
4. R. Kirshner
5. S. Jha
6. A. Riess
7. Weidong Li
8. E. Berger

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. S. Jha
2. A. Riess
3. B. Leibundgut
4. A. Filippenko
5. A. Gal-yam
6. S. Smartt
7. Ryan Chornock
8. T. Thompson

Citations in the corpus

• The Carnegie Supernova Project. I. Third Photometry Data Release of Low-redshift Type Ia Supernovae and Other White Dwarf Explosions (2017, background): “The prototype of this subclass is SN2002cx (Filippenko 2003; Li et al. 2003).”
• The death of massive stars – I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of Type II-P supernovae (2008, background): “…Ia scenario, can be present in a thermonuclear SN. Valenti et al. noted that SN 2008ha appears to be related to the class of SN 2002cx-like SNe (Li et al. 2003), and suggested that all of these may be related to Type Ibc SNe, possibly with fallback of the innermost ejecta on to the compact…”
• Observational Constraints on the Nature of Dark Energy: First Cosmological Results from the ESSENCE Supernova Survey (2007, methodology): “We applied the light-curve criteria from Tables 1 and 3 and also rejected known peculiar SNe Ia such as SN 2000cx (Li et al. 2001) and SN 2002cx (Li et al. 2003; Jha et al. 2006a).”
• SN 2005cs in M51 – II. Complete evolution in the optical and the near-infrared (2009, background): “…Valenti et al. (2009) present a study of the faintest SN Ib/c ever discovered, SN 2008ha, and propose that the whole family of objects similar to SN 2002cx and previously classified as peculiar type Ia SNe (e.g. Li et al. 2003) are instead underluminous, stripped-envelope core-collapse SNe.”
• Improved Distances to Type Ia Supernovae with Multicolor Light-Curve Shapes: MLCS2k2 (2006, background): “Li et al. (2001, 2003) discuss the peculiarity of these objects, whose light curves are distinct from the vast majority of SNe Ia.”
• Berkeley Supernova Ia Program – I. Observations, data reduction and spectroscopic sample of 582 low-redshift Type Ia supernovae (2012, background): “Similarly, “Ia-02cx” SNe have spectra that resemble those of SN 2002cx-like objects (e.g., Li et al. 2003; Jha et al. 2006; Foley et al. 2009a).”
• SiFTO: An Empirical Method for Fitting SN Ia Light Curves (2008, background): “We have not included sub-luminous (SN 1991bg-like) SNe Ia in our sample because they are not well represented by our base SED, and have excluded extremely peculiar SNe such as SN 2002cx (Li et al. 2003).”
• Nearby supernova rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search – I. The methods and data base (2010, background): “…(b) high expansion velocity objects (Benetti et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2009), (c) SN 1991T-like objects (Filippenko et al. 1992a; Phillips et al. 1992), (d) SN 1991bg-like objects (Filippenko et al. 1992b; Leibundgut et al. 1993), and (e) SN 2002cx-like objects (Li et al. 2003; Jha et al. 2006).”
• Three-dimensional pure deflagration models with nucleosynthesis and synthetic observables for type ia supernovae (2013, background): “…(2013), model N5def, which leaves behind a bound remnant of 1.03 M , reproduces the observed light curves of SN 2005hk (Phillips et al. c© 2014 RAS, MNRAS 438, 1762–1783 2007), a prototypical event of the class of faint SNe similar to SN 2002cx (Li et al. 2003; Jha et al. 2006), remarkably well.”
• The ESSENCE Supernova Survey: Survey Optimization, Observations, and Supernova Photometry (2007, background): “The spectra that correspond to the ‘‘Ia-pec’’ category in this case are those of SN2000cx (Li et al. 2001b; Candia et al. 2003) and SN 2002cx (Li et al. 2003).”
• THE SPECTROSCOPIC DIVERSITY OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2000, background): “…Jha et al. 1999b; SN 1999by, Garnavich et al. 2004; SN 2001ay, Krisciunas et al. 2011a; SN 2001eh and SN 2001ep, Sauer et al. 2008; SN 2002cx, Li et al. 2003; SN 2005cf, Wang et al. 2009b; SN 2006bt, Foley et al. 2010; SN 2006gz, Hicken et al. 2007a), including the large sample of 432…”
• The Cow: Discovery of a Luminous, Hot, and Rapidly Evolving Transient (2018, background): “…advent of wide-field transient surveys that scan the visible sky every few nights has led to the discovery of new classes of transients, such as superluminous supernovae (SLSNe, e.g., Quimby et al. 2011), Type Iax SNe (e.g. Li et al. 2003), and Ca-rich transients (e.g. Perets et al. 2010).”
• Fourteen months of observations of the possible super-Chandrasekhar mass Type Ia Supernova 2009dc (2010, methodology): “2 as part of our R-band data [Li et al. (2003a) show that KAIT unfiltered data approximate the R band].”
• The Hubble Diagram to Redshift >6 from 69 Gamma-Ray Bursts (2006, unknown): “…(de Vaucouleurs & Corwin 1985; Fesen et al. 1989), SNLS-03D3bb (Howell et al. 2006), SN 2005hk (Phillips et al. 2006; Stanishev et al. 2006), SN 2002cx (Li et al. 2003), SN 2003gq (Jha et al. 2006), SN 2005P (Jha et al. 2006), SN 2005cc (Antilogus et al. 2005), and SN 1006 (Schaefer 1996a, 1996b).”
• TYPE Iax SUPERNOVAE: A NEW CLASS OF STELLAR EXPLOSION (2012, background): “Kromer et al. (2012) presented NIR spectra and late-time photometry of SN 2005hk, while Sahu et al. (2008) and Valenti et al. (2009) published late-time spectra.”