Nearby Supernova Rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search. II. The Observed Luminosity Functions and Fractions of Supernovae in a Complete Sample

By Weidong Li, J. Leaman, Ryan Chornock, A. Filippenko, Dovi Poznanski, M. Ganeshalingam, Xiaofeng Wang, Maryam Modjaz, S. Jha, R. Foley and 4 more. 2010

635 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This is the second paper of a series in which we present new measurements of the observed rates of supernovae (SNe) in the local Universe, determined from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS). In this paper, a complete SN sample is constructed, and the observed (uncorrected for host-galaxy extinction) luminosity functions (LFs) of SNe are derived. These LFs solve two issues that have plagued previous rate calculations for nearby SNe: the luminosity distribution of SNe and the host-galaxy extinction. We select a volume-limited sample of 175 SNe, collect photometry for every object, and fit a family of light curves to constrain the peak magnitudes and light-curve shapes. The volume-limited LFs show that they are not well represented by a Gaussian distribution. There are notable differences in the LFs for galaxies of different Hubble types (especially for SNe Ia). We derive the observed fractions for the different subclasses in a complete SN sample, and find significant fractions of SNe II-L (10%), IIb (12%), and IIn (9%) in the SN II sample. Furthermore, we derive the LFs and the observed fractions of different SN subclasses in a magnitudelimited survey with different observation intervals, and find that the LFs are enhanced at the high-luminosity end and appear more “standard” with smaller scatter, and that the LFs and fractions of SNe do not change significantly when the observation interval is shorter than 10 d. We also discuss the LFs in different galaxy sizes and inclinations, and for different SN subclasses. Some notable results are that there is not a strong correlation between the SN LFs and the host-galaxy size, but there might be a preference for SNe IIn to occur in small, late-type spiral galaxies. The LFs in different inclination bins do not provide strong evidence for extreme extinction in highly inclined galaxies, though the sample is still small. The LFs of different SN subclasses show significant differences. We also find that SNe Ibc and IIb come from more luminous galaxies than SNe II-P, while SNe IIn come from less luminous galaxies, suggesting a possible metallicity effect. The limitations and applications of our LFs are also discussed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea934247f29de626c2de3799f3d6482418cce6a6

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. E. Berger
5. F. Mannucci
6. D. Maoz
7. A. Riess
8. Ryan Chornock

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. N. Smith
2. D. Maoz
3. S. Smartt
4. E. Berger
5. F. Mannucci
6. T. Thompson
7. R. Kirshner
8. A. Filippenko

Citations in the corpus

• 3D deflagration simulations leaving bound remnants: a model for 2002cx-like Type Ia supernovae (2012, background): “As of today several sub-classes of SNe Ia have been identified (Li et al. 2011).”
• THE COSMIC CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVA RATE DOES NOT MATCH THE MASSIVE-STAR FORMATION RATE (2011, methodology): “The most reliable SNR measurement is that by LOSS (Leaman et al. 2011; Li et al. 2011a,b; Maoz et al. 2011): they have excellent cadence and the largest published SN sample.”
• PESSTO: survey description and products from the first data release by the Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects (2014, background): “The long running and very successful nearby supernova (SN) searches of LOSS (Li et al. 2011; Leaman et al. 2011) and CHASE (Pignata et al. 2009), are aided by the large community of well equipped and experienced amateur astronomers throughout the world who have also increased their detection limits…”
• Berkeley Supernova Ia Program – I. Observations, data reduction and spectroscopic sample of 582 low-redshift Type Ia supernovae (2012, methodology): “…10.9 15 0.0 0 Ia-91T/99aa 1.0c 1.9d 5.5 9 1.4e 4–19 Ia-02cx 1.5 0.9 2.4 5 0.0 0 Ia-pec 0.0 0.0 0.6 0 0.7 0 “G10” = Ganeshalingam et al. (2010), “L11” = Li et al. (2011), “O11” = Östman et al. (2011), “F09” = Foley et al. (2009b). aOnly spectra with ages less than 15 d past maximum brightness…”
• SN 2011dh: DISCOVERY OF A TYPE IIb SUPERNOVA FROM A COMPACT PROGENITOR IN THE NEARBY GALAXY M51 (2011, background): “Numerous corecollapse SNe are discovered each year and statistical analyses of large samples are yielding interesting insights (e.g., Anderson & James 2009; Boissier & Prantzos 2009; Arcavi et al. 2010; Li et al. 2011; Smith et al. 2011b).”
• The Carnegie Supernova Project. I. Third Photometry Data Release of Low-redshift Type Ia Supernovae and Other White Dwarf Explosions (2017, methodology): “…an SN Ia (the “delay-time distribution”; Maoz et al. 2010) and the unsuccessful search for evidence of the companions to normal TypeIa SNe (see, e.g., Li et al. 2011; Schaefer & Pagnotta 2012; Olling et al. 2015) would seem to favor the double-degenerate model, but some events, such as SN2012cg…”
• Observational Signatures of Particle Acceleration in Supernova Remnants (2012, background): “About 24% of all supernovae are type Ia’s, 10% are type Ibc’s and 57% are type II’s (Li et al., 2011).”
• The death of massive stars – I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of Type II-P supernovae (2008, methodology): “Smith et al. (2011a) measured SN rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS) sample, based on those SNe selected for the luminosity function analysis by Li et al. (2011), with a total of 106 CCSNe within 60 Mpc.”
• Six months of multiwavelength follow-up of the tidal disruption candidate asassn-14li and implied tde rates from asas-sn (2015, result): “…in future work by Dong et al. (in prep.). c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 We also note that if we carry out a similar rate analysis for Type Ia SNe in ASAS-SN, we find a rate consistent with that found by the LOSS survey (Li et al. 2011), suggesting that the overall analysis is reasonably robust.”
• Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, background): “This merger rate is similar to recent estimates of the SN Ia rate per unit mass in Sbc-type galaxies of MilkyWay mass, ∼ 1 × 10−13 yr−1M−1 (Li et al. 2011b, Mannucci et al. 2005, see Section 3.5.7, below).”
• Observational probes of cosmic acceleration (2012, background): “The diversity of SN Ia light curves is not fully understood, and peculiar SNe Ia appear to produce ∼ 5% non-Gaussian tails in the SN Ia distribution (Li et al. 2011).”
• The diversity of Type II supernova versus the similarity in their progenitors (2016, background): “• Despite the fact that SNe IIL are on average more luminous than SNe IIP (Patat et al. 1994; Li et al. 2011), there is no clear evidence that the decline rates of SNe II correlate with the amount of 56Ni observed.”
• The Zwicky Transient Facility Bright Transient Survey. II. A Public Statistical Sample for Exploring Supernova Demographics (2020, result): “This is in agreement with other works arguing that the “SN rate problem” (Horiuchi et al. 2011, originally motivated by the lower CC SN rate of Li et al. 2011) is resolved using galaxy-untargeted surveys and including the faint end of the luminosity function, without requiring a large population of…”
• Rates of superluminous supernovae at z ∼ 0.2 (2013, background): “There is a growing sample of supernovae with peak luminosities over 30 times brighter than average (based on M = −16.8 from the volume limited Lick Observatory Supernova Search, Li et al. 2011).”
• IDENTIFYING ELUSIVE ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE MERGERS: AN END-TO-END SIMULATION (2012, background): “Thanks to systematic optical synoptic surveys, rate estimates of different classes of SNe occuring in a range of galaxy hosts now exist; for instance, corecollapse SNe rate is 7.1 (± 0.1)× 10−5 Mpc−3 yr−1 (see e.g., Leaman et al. 2011; Li et al. 2011a,b).”
• The delay-time distribution of Type Ia supernovae from Sloan II (2012, methodology): “M11 applied the method to a subsample of the galaxies in the Lick Observatory SN Search (LOSS; Leaman et al. 2011; Li et al. 2011a,b) that have SFHs based on Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. 2000) spectra, as recovered by Tojeiro et al. (2009), and to the SNe found by LOSS in those…”