ON THE SOURCE OF THE DUST EXTINCTION IN TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE AND THE DISCOVERY OF ANOMALOUSLY STRONG Na i ABSORPTION
By M. Phillips, J. Simon, N. Morrell, C. Burns, N. Cox, R. Foley, A. Karakas, Ferdinando Patat, A. Sternberg, Robert E. Williams and 22 more. 2013
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High-dispersion observations of the Na i D λλ5890, 5896 and K i λλ7665, 7699 interstellar lines, and the diffuse interstellar band at 5780 Å in the spectra of 32 Type Ia supernovae are used as an independent means of probing dust extinction. We show that the dust extinction of the objects where the diffuse interstellar band at 5780 Å is detected is consistent with the visual extinction derived from the supernova colors. This strongly suggests that the dust producing the extinction is predominantly located in the interstellar medium of the host galaxies and not in circumstellar material associated with the progenitor system. One quarter of the supernovae display anomalously large Na i column densities in comparison to the amount of dust extinction derived from their colors. Remarkably, all of the cases of unusually strong Na i D absorption correspond to “Blueshifted” profiles in the classification scheme of Sternberg et al. This coincidence suggests that outflowing circumstellar gas is responsible for at least some of the cases of anomalously large Na i column densities. Two supernovae with unusually strong Na i D absorption showed essentially normal K i column densities for the dust extinction implied by their colors, but this does not appear to be a universal characteristic. Overall, we find the most accurate predictor of individual supernova extinction to be the equivalent width of the diffuse interstellar band at 5780 Å, and provide an empirical relation for its use. Finally, we identify ways of producing significant enhancements of the Na abundance of circumstellar material in both the single-degenerate and double-degenerate scenarios for the progenitor system.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c688cdbb846c3b5ca1a0e7001b74c30517308080
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Citations in the corpus
- The Carnegie Supernova Project I: analysis of stripped-envelope supernova light curves (2017, background): “We note that Phillips et al. (2013) showed that estimating extinction (even in our galaxy) via EWNa i D implies large uncertainty.”
- Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, background): “Phillips et al. (2013) have studied a sample of 32 SNe Ia at high spectral resolution.”
- Improved cosmological constraints from a joint analysis of the SDSS-II and SNLS supernova samples (2014, background): “…evolution of the effective dust extinction law due to a mixture of intrinsic color variation, circumstellar dust, and extinction in the interstellar medium of the SNe host galaxies (Amanullah & Goobar 2011; Silverman et al. 2013; Maguire et al. 2013; Johansson et al. 2013a; Phillips et al. 2013).”
- CHARACTERIZING THE V-BAND LIGHT-CURVES OF HYDROGEN-RICH TYPE II SUPERNOVAE (2014, methodology): “At the same time, absence of NaD is generally a first order approximation of low level or zero extinction, while high EW of NaD possibly implies some degree of host galaxy reddening (Phillips et al. 2013).”