Title: Metallicity from Type II supernovae from the (i)PTF

Abstract

Type IIP supernovae (SNe IIP) have recently been proposed as metallicity (Z) probes. The spectral models of Dessart et al. (2014, MNRAS, 440, 1856) showed that the pseudo-equivalent width of Fe ii λ5018 (pEW₅₀₁₈) during the plateau phase depends on the primordial Z, but there was a paucity of SNe IIP exhibiting pEW₅₀₁₈ that were compatible with Z < 0.4 Z_⊙. This lack might be due to some physical property of the SN II population or to the fact that those SNe have been discovered in luminous, metal-rich targeted galaxies. In this paper, we use SN II observations from the untargeted (intermediate) Palomar Transient Factory [(i)PTF] survey, aiming to investigate the pEW₅₀₁₈ distribution of this SN population and, in particular, to look for the presence of SNe II at lower Z. We perform pEW₅₀₁₈ measurements on the spectra of a sample of 39 (i)PTF SNe II, selected to have well-constrained explosion epochs and light-curve properties. Based on the comparison with the pEW₅₀₁₈ spectral models, we subgrouped our SNe into four Z bins from Z ≈ 0.1 Z_⊙ up to Z ≈ 2 Z_⊙. We also independently investigated the Z of the hosts by using their absolute magnitudes and colors and,more » in a few cases, using strong-line diagnostics from spectra. We searched for possible correlations between SN observables, such as their peak magnitudes and the Z inferred from pEW₅₀₁₈. We found 11 events with pEW₅₀₁₈ that were small enough to indicate Z ≈ 0.1 Z_⊙. The trend of pEW₅₀₁₈ with Z matches the Z estimates obtained from the host-galaxy photometry, although the significance of the correlation is weak. Finally, we also found that SNe with brighter peak magnitudes have smaller pEW₅₀₁₈ and occur at lower Z.« less

Authors:

Taddia, F. ^[1]; Moquist, P. ^[1]; Sollerman, J. ^[1]; Rubin, A. ^[2]; Leloudas, G. ^[3]; Gal-Yam, A. ^[2]; Arcavi, I. ^[4]; Cao, Y. ^[5]; Filippenko, A. V. ^[6]; Graham, M. L. ^[6]; Mazzali, P. A. ^[7]; Nugent, P. E. ^[8]; Pan, Y. -C. ^[9]; Silverman, J. M. ^[10]; Xu, D. ^[11]; Yaron, O. ^[2]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden)
2. Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot (Israel)
3. Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot (Israel); Univ. of Copenhagen (Denmark)
4. Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Goleta, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
5. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
6. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
7. Liverpool John Moores Univ., Liverpool (United Kingdom); Max Planck Inst. for Astrophysics, Garching (Germany)
8. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
9. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States)
10. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
11. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)

Publication Date:

2016-03-01

Research Org.:

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF); Swedish Research Council (SRC); European Research Council (ERC); Israel Science Foundation (ISF)

OSTI Identifier:

1393032

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC02-05CH11231; AST-1211916; AST-1302771; 307260

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 587; Journal ID: ISSN 0004-6361

Publisher:

EDP Sciences

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; supernovae; galaxies; abundances