Core-collapse explosions of Wolf–Rayet stars and the connection to Type IIb/Ib/Ic supernovae

By L. Dessart, D. John Hillier, E. Livne, Sung-Chul Yoon, S. Woosley, R. Waldman, N. Langer. 2011

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) time-dependent radiative-transfer simulations of supernova (SN) IIb/Ib/Ic spectra and light curves, based on ∼10 51 erg piston- driven ejecta, with and without 56 Ni, produced from single and binary Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars evolved at solar and sub-solar metallicities. Our bolometric light curves show a 10- d long post-breakout plateau with a luminosity of 1-5 × 10 7 L� , visually brighter by 10 mag than the progenitor WR star. In our 56 Ni-rich models, with ∼ 3Mejecta masses, this plateau precedes a 20 to 30 d long re-brightening phase initiated by the outward- diffusing heat wave powered by radioactive decay at depth. A larger ejecta mass or a deeper 56 Ni location increases the heat diffusion time and acts to both delay and broaden the light-curve peak. Discriminating between the two effects requires spectroscopic mod- elling. In low ejecta-mass models with moderate mixing, γ -ray leakage starts as early as ∼50 d after explosion and causes the nebular luminosity to steeply decline by ∼0.02 mag d −1 . Such signatures, which are observed in standard SNe IIb/Ib/Ic, are consistent with low-mass progenitors derived from a binary-star population. We propose that the major- ity of stars with an initial mass 20 Myield SNe II-P if 'effectively' single, SNe IIb/ Ib/Ic if part of a close binary system, and SN-less black holes if more massive. Our ejecta, with outer hydrogen mass fractions as low as0.01 and a total hydrogen mass of0.001 M� , yield the characteristic SN IIb spectral morphology at early times. However at later times, ∼15 d after the explosion, only Hα may remain as a weak absorption feature. Our binary models, characterized by helium surface mass fractions of 0.85, systematically show He I lines during the post-breakout plateau, irrespective of the 56 Ni abundance. Synthetic spectra show a strong sensitivity to metallicity, which offers the possibility to constrain it directly from SN spectroscopic modelling.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb297558c2b4b320b4e6f89ac36c5ff2c436268d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. Smartt
2. Stan Woosley
3. N. Smith
4. N. Langer
5. G. Meynet
6. R. Hirschi
7. A. Filippenko
8. M. Limongi

Citations in the corpus

• The Carnegie Supernova Project I: analysis of stripped-envelope supernova light curves (2017, background): “Numerical modeling show the possibility that low 56Ni mixing can imply the absence of He lines in the spectra despite the presence of He in the ejecta (e.g., Dessart et al. 2011).”
• On the nature of supernovae Ib and Ic (2012, methodology): “As we discussed recently, they cannot be associated with high-mass ejecta because of the short rise time to light-curve peak, the narrow light-curve peak and the fast light-curve decline at nebular epochs (Ensman & Woosley 1988; Dessart et al. 2011).”
• OPTICAL SPECTRA OF 73 STRIPPED-ENVELOPE CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE (2014, background): “…Lucy 1991; Wheeler et al. 1994; Clocchiatti et al. 1996; Matheson et al. 2001, and more recently, e.g., Modjaz et al. 2009; Leloudas et al. 2011; Dessart et al. 2011; Hachinger et al. 2012; Dessart et al. 2012, and for SNe IIb, see Pastorello et al. 2008; Chornock et al. 2011; Arcavi et al.…”
• Grids of stellar models with rotation - II. WR populations and supernovae/GRB progenitors at Z = 0.014 (2012, background): “Recently, Dessart et al. (2011) found that some amount of He can be unobservable in the spectrum of an SN when it is located primarily in the most external layers (up to 50% of He in mass fraction in the first 1M⊙ immediately below the surface).”
• Mass Loss: Its Effect on the Evolution and Fate of High-Mass Stars (2014, background): “…channel agrees with relatively low ejecta masses and H/He mass fractions inferred from detailed radiative transfer models of stripped-envelope SNe (Dessart et al. 2011, Hachinger et al. 2012, Yoon et al. 2010), which seem to rule out the idea that SNe IIb and Ib can come from progenitors much…”
• PRE-SUPERNOVA EVOLUTION OF ROTATING SOLAR METALLICITY STARS IN THE MASS RANGE 13–120 M☉ AND THEIR EXPLOSIVE YIELDS (2012, background): “…can produce a Type Ic SN lightcurve because of the rather high mass of He present in the envelope at the time of the explosion; note however that Dessart et al. (2011) question the upper limiting value of 0.1 M⊙ to have a Type Ic supernova explosion since they find that cases in which the He…”
• Presupernova Evolution and Explosive Nucleosynthesis of Rotating Massive Stars in the Metallicity Range −3 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ 0 (2018, background): “…rather good agreement with the ejected masses of 3–4Me estimated from the SNIb light curve fitting (Wheeler & Levreault 1985; Ensman & Woosley 1988; Dessart et al. 2011, 2015, 2016; Lyman et al. 2016); and (d) a limiting mass between SNIIP and SNIb corresponding to MIIP∼17Me implies a fraction…”
• Early-time light curves of Type Ib/c supernovae from the SDSS-II Supernova Survey (2014, background): “This uncertainty is small enough to exclude the existence of an initial long plateau (Dessart et al. 2011) in the bolometric light curves (see Sect.”
• THE TYPE IIb SUPERNOVA 2011dh FROM A SUPERGIANT PROGENITOR (2012, result): “This H mass is high enough to be detected in the spectra and therefore it is consistent with the SN IIb classification (Dessart et al. 2011).”
• RADIATIVE TRANSFER SIMULATIONS OF NEUTRON STAR MERGER EJECTA (2013, background): “In fact, non-thermal effects are known to be important for the excitation of He lines in Type Ib SNe (Lucy 1991; Dessart et al. 2011; Hachinger et al. 2012).”
• Fundamental properties of core-collapse Supernova and GRB progenitors: predicting the look of massive stars before death (2013, methodology): “However, we recall here the caveats associated with classifying the SN type based on the chemical composition of the ejecta, and the challenges of distinguishing between SN Ib and Ic based on the He abundance (e.g. Dessart et al. 2011).”
• Ultra-stripped supernovae: progenitors and fate (2015, background): “However, this que - tion also depends on the amount of nickel synthesized duringthe explosion and how well it is mixed into the helium-rich material of the ejected envelope (Dessart et al. 2011), given that the detectable helium is excited by the radioactive decay of nickel.”
• PTF12os and iPTF13bvn. Two stripped-envelope supernovae from low-mass progenitors in NGC 5806 (2016, background): “…physical modeling of the spectra of iPTF13bvn is needed to put a realistic upper limit on the hydrogen mass, especially since the modeling by Dessart et al. (2011) found that even with an envelope mass as low as 0.001 M , Hα will still be present at +15 d − a very small amount of hydrogen…”
• CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE FROM 9 TO 120 SOLAR MASSES BASED ON NEUTRINO-POWERED EXPLOSIONS (2015, background): “…than45 M have lost most of their helium envelope and all have surface 4He mass fractions less than 0.2 (Table 2);however, the exact distinction between Ib and Ic is as much dependent on mixing as on mass loss (Dessart et al. 2011), and we shall not attempt to separate the two classes in this work.”