Progenitors of Core-Collapse Supernovae

Abstract

Knowledge of the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae is a fundamental component in understanding the explosions. The recent progress in finding such stars is reviewed. The minimum initial mass that can produce a supernova has converged to 8 ± 1M⊙, from direct detections of red supergiant progenitors of II-P SNe and the most massive white dwarf progenitors, although this value is model dependent. It appears that most type Ibc supernovae arise from moderate mass interacting binaries. The highly energetic, broad-lined Ic supernovae are likely produced by massive, Wolf-Rayet progenitors. There is some evidence to suggest that the majority of massive stars above ∼20M⊙ may collapse quietly to black-holes and that the explosions remain undetected. The recent discovery of a class of ultra-bright type II supernovae and the direct detection of some progenitor stars bearing luminous blue variable characteristics suggests some very massive stars do produce highly energetic explosions. The physical mechanism is open to debate and these SNe pose a challenge to stellar evolutionary theory.

The Development of Explosions in Axisymmetric Ab Initio Core-Collapse Supernova Simulations of 12–25 Stars

“…Two of the nearest events, SN1987A and SN1993J, which have fairly massive and wellobserved progenitors, are both peculiar. Aside from these two outliers, the rest of the supernovae that have thus far had their progenitors observed on archival images of the host galaxy, or upper limits placed on their luminosity, are SN IIP whose progenitors are mostly RSGs with inferred masses clustering around the low end of the progenitor ZAMS mass range for which core collapse is a possible evolutionary outcome, M 8 1 ZAMS »  M  (Smartt 2009;Fraser et al 2011). However, there are several events with progenitors having inferred M 12 ZAMS » -25 M  within the range of progenitors used in our simulations.…”

“…This requires corrections for estimated mass loss during progenitor evolution and a compact remnant mass estimate. Since this method requires high-quality photometric and spectroscopic data, it has only been applied to a handful of events where such data are available (e.g., Zampieri et al 2003;Baklanov et al 2005;Utrobin 2007;Utrobin & Chugai 2008, 2009Pastorello et al 2009;Dall'Ora et al 2014). Typically, these models of explosions in RSGs predict significantly higher ZAMS masses than those obtained by direct imaging.…”

Evidence for Magnetar Formation in Broad-lined Type Ic Supernovae1998bw and 2002ap

“…Fortunately, κ is a parameter that characterizes the microphysics of the ejecta and therefore can be calculated in first principles based on our knowledge about the ejecta composition. It is believed that the progenitor of an SN Ic (broad-lined or not) is a massive single star or a low-mass star in a binary (Smartt 2009). The ejecta of such a star explosion are mainly composed of 16 O, 20 Ne and 24 Mg (Iwamoto et al 2000;Nakamura et al 2001a;Maeda et al 2002).…”

Supernovae and their host galaxies – II. The relative frequencies of supernovae types in spirals

“…Core-Collapse (CC) SNe, whose progenitors are thought to be young massive stars (e.g. Turatto 2003;Smartt 2009;Anderson et al 2012), are observationally classified in three major classes, according to the strength of lines in optical spectra (e.g. Filippenko 1997): Type II SNe show hydrogen lines in their spectra, while Types Ib and Ic do not, with Type Ib SNe showing helium and Type Ic SNe showing neither hydrogen nor helium.…”