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Don’t Blink: Constraining the Circumstellar Environment of the Interacting Type Ia Supernova 2015cp

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12];  [9]
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem (Israel)
  3. Univ. of Oxford (United Kingdom)
  4. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
  5. Queens Univ. Belfast (United Kingdom)
  6. Univ. of Southampton (United Kingdom)
  7. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
  8. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
  9. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  10. Space Telescope Science Inst., Baltimore, MD (United States)
  11. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden)
  12. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (United States)

Despite their cosmological utility, the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are still unknown, with many efforts focused on whether accretion from a nondegenerate companion can grow a carbon-oxygen white dwarf to near the Chandrasekhar mass. The association of SNe Ia resembling SN 1991T ("91T-like") with circumstellar interaction may be evidence for this "single-degenerate" channel. However, the observed circumstellar medium (CSM) in these interacting systems is unlike a stellar wind - of particular interest, it is sometimes detached from the stellar surface, residing at ~1016 cm. A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) program to discover detached CSM around 91T-like SNe Ia successfully discovered interaction nearly two years after explosion in SN 2015cp (Graham et al. 2018). Here, we present radio and X-ray follow-up observations of SN 2015cp and analyze them in the framework of Harris et al. (2016) to limit the properties of a constant-density CSM shell in this system. Assuming the HST detection took place shortly after the shock crossed the CSM, we constrain the total CSM mass in this system to be <0.5 M. This limit is comparable to the CSM mass of supernova PTF11kx, but does not rule out lower masses predicted for recurrent novae. Lastly, from lessons learned modeling PTF11kx and SN 2015cp, we suggest a strategy for future observations of these events to increase the sample of known interacting SNe Ia.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1580341
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal (Online) Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 868; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Delayed Circumstellar Interaction for Type Ia SN 2015cp Revealed by an HST Ultraviolet Imaging Survey journal January 2019

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