A COMPACT DEGENERATE PRIMARY-STAR PROGENITOR OF SN 2011fe

By Joshua S. Bloom, D. Kasen, K. Shen, P. Nugent, N. Butler, M. Graham, D. Andrew Howell, U. Kolb, S. Holmes, C. Haswell and 3 more. 2011

229 citations recorded by the source corpus.

While a white dwarf (WD) is, from a theoretical perspective, the most plausible primary star of a Type Ia supernova (SN Ia), many other candidates have not been formally ruled out. Shock energy deposited in the envelope of any exploding primary contributes to the early SN brightness and, since this radiation energy is degraded by expansion after the explosion, the diffusive luminosity depends on the initial primary radius. We present a new non-detection limit of the nearby SN Ia 2011fe, obtained at a time that appears to be just 4 hr after explosion, allowing us to directly constrain the initial primary radius (Rp). Coupled with the non-detection of a quiescent X-ray counterpart and the inferred synthesized 56Ni mass, we show that Rp ≲ 0.02 R☉ (a factor of five smaller than previously inferred), that the average density of the primary must be ρp > 104 g cm−3, and that the effective temperature must be less than a few × 105 K. This rules out hydrogen-burning main-sequence stars and giants. Constructing the helium-burning and carbon-burning main sequences, we find that such objects are also excluded. By process of elimination, we find that only degeneracy-supported compact objects—WDs and neutron stars—are viable as the primary star of SN 2011fe. With few caveats, we also restrict the companion (secondary) star radius to Rc ≲ 0.1 R☉, excluding Roche-lobe overflowing red giant and main-sequence companions to high significance.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f7fbbd9e60430b0b24aba25e0e0a38f6abfbc432

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Filippenko
2. D. Kasen
3. F. Mannucci
4. E. Berger
5. D. Maoz
6. P. Hopkins
7. A. Riess
8. N. Smith

Citations in the corpus

• ON THE SOURCE OF THE DUST EXTINCTION IN TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE AND THE DISCOVERY OF ANOMALOUSLY STRONG Na i ABSORPTION (2013, background): “…observations of the prototypical Type Ia SN 2011fe place tight upper limits on the amount of CSM in the progenitor system before explosion (e.g., Horesh et al. 2012), and early-time photometry of this event apparently rules out either a red giant or main sequence companion (Bloom et al. 2012).”
• Theoretical uncertainties of the Type Ia supernova rate (2014, background): “It is generally accepted that SNe Iaare thermonuclear explosions of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (CO WDs; Nomoto 1982; Bloom et al. 2012).”
• EVLA OBSERVATIONS CONSTRAIN THE ENVIRONMENT AND PROGENITOR SYSTEM OF Type Ia SUPERNOVA 2011fe (2012, background): “In addition, no blue early-time blue component was detected for SN2011fe, placing strong constraints on possible Rochelobe filling companions (<1 M⊙ red giant, or <3 M⊙ main sequence; Brown et al. 2011; see also Nugent et al. 2011; Bloom et al. 2012).”
• An Open Catalog for Supernova Data (2016, background): “…breakouts or interactions with a nearby companion, are manifest in the early-time behavior of a supernova’s evolution (Falk & Arnett 1977; Klein & Chevalier 1978; Kirshner et al. 1987; Campana et al. 2006; Soderberg et al. 2008a; Schawinski et al. 2008; Bloom et al. 2012; Garnavich et al. 2016).”
• Three Hypervelocity White Dwarfs in Gaia DR2: Evidence for Dynamically Driven Double-degenerate Double-detonation Type Ia Supernovae (2018, background): “…which may not be surprising given other mounting evidence that single degenerate scenarios cannot be responsible for the bulk of SNe Ia (e.g., Leonard 2007; Kasen 2010; Gilfanov & Bogdán 2010; Li et al. 2011b; Bloom et al. 2012; Olling et al. 2015; Maguire et al. 2016; Woods et al. 2017).”
• The delay-time distribution of Type Ia supernovae from Sloan II (2012, background): “One example is the lack of early-time ultraviolet shock signatures (Kasen 2010) due to ejecta hitting a SD red-giant donor (e.g. Nugent et al. 2011; Bloom et al. 2012; Brown et al. 2012), or lack of early radio and X-ray emission, expected if the SN blast wave were to encounter a circumstellar wind…”
• Type Ia Supernova Distances at Redshift >1.5 from the Hubble Space Telescope Multi-cycle Treasury Programs: The Early Expansion Rate (2017, background): “More recently, prediscovery observations of SN 2011fe, a prototypical SN Ia in M101, demonstrated that the progenitor did not exceed a radius of 2% solar, fully consistent with the expected white dwarf (Nugent et al. 2011; Li et al. 2011; Bloom et al. 2012).”
• Three-dimensional delayed-detonation models with nucleosynthesis for Type Ia supernovae (2012, background): “Essentially by means of exclusion, white dwarf (WD) stars in interacting binary systems are theonly viable proposed progenitor systems (cf. Bloom et al. 2012).”
• THE LONG-TERM EVOLUTION OF DOUBLE WHITE DWARF MERGERS (2011, background): “However, in the case of SNe Ia, such a large amount of observable shock-deposited energy has been ruled out in at least one case by recent early-time measurements of SN 2011fe (Nugent et al. 2011; Bloom et al. 2012).”
• Hubble Space Telescope spectra of the type Ia supernova SN 2011fe: a tail of low-density, high-velocity material with Z < Z⊙ (2013, background): “As outlined by Piro &Nakar (2013b), this dark period has implications on the upper limits on the radii of the progenitor (Rprog) determined from the early light-curve (Nugent et al. 2011; Bloom et al. 2012): we findRprog .”
• HELIUM-IGNITED VIOLENT MERGERS AS A UNIFIED MODEL FOR NORMAL AND RAPIDLY DECLINING TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2013, background): “In particular, the very nearby normal SN Ia 2011fe did not show any signs of a companion star (Li et al. 2011; Bloom et al. 2012), nor any signature of hydrogen in nebular spectra (Shappee et al. 2013) which is expected in the single-degenerate scenario owing to material stripped from the companion…”
• Sub-Chandrasekhar-mass White Dwarf Detonations Revisited (2017, background): “…(MCh) scenario is responsible for the bulk of SNe Ia (e.g., Leonard 2007; Shen & Bildsten 2007; Kerzendorf et al. 2009; Ruiter et al. 2009; Kasen 2010; Bloom et al. 2012; Schaefer & Pagnotta 2012; Woods & Gilfanov 2013; Scalzo et al. 2014; Johansson et al. 2016; Dhawan et al. 2017).”
• CONSTRAINING TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA MODELS: SN 2011fe AS A TEST CASE (2012, background): “At the onset of the explosion, the primary had a radius below 0.02R⊙ making our violent merger scenario consistent with the constraint on the radius of the exploding object derived by Bloom et al. (2012).”
• THE SPECTROSCOPIC DIVERSITY OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2000, background): “…of SN Ia involves the thermonuclear disruption of a carbon-oxygen (C/O) white dwarf (WD) star (Hoyle & Fowler 1960; this has been confirmed by recent observations of the nearby Type Ia SN 2011fe in M101; Nugent et al. 2011; Bloom et al. 2012) as it approaches the Chandrasekhar mass (MCh ≈ 1.4M⊙).”
• Spectrophotometric time series of SN 2011fe from the Nearby Supernova Factory (2013, background): “Using images obtained just hours after outburst, pre-explosion X-ray limits, and the inferred 56Ni yield, Bloom et al. (2012) constrain the progenitor primary of SN 2011fe to be a white dwarf or neutron star − the first direct imaging evidence for a compact primary.”
• Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, methodology): “All three studies rule out red giants donors, Brown et al. (2012a) exclude also main-sequence companions of radius Rc ∼> R , and Bloom et al. (2012) sharpen this limit to Rc ∼< 0.1R .”