Constraining the progenitor companion of the nearby Type Ia SN 2011fe with a nebular spectrum at +981 d

Graham, M. L.; Nugent, P. E.; Sullivan, M.; Filippenko, A. V.; Cenko, S. B.; Silverman, J. M.; Clubb, K. I.; Zheng, W.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stv1888

Title: Constraining the progenitor companion of the nearby Type Ia SN 2011fe with a nebular spectrum at +981 d

Journal Article · 09 October 2015 · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1888 · OSTI ID:1512132

Graham, M. L. ^[1]; Nugent, P. E. ^[2]; Sullivan, M. ^[3]; Filippenko, A. V. ^[1]; Cenko, S. B. ^[4]; Silverman, J. M. ^[5]; Clubb, K. I. ^[1]; Zheng, W. ^[1]

Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Univ. of Southampton (United Kingdom)
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)

We present an optical nebular spectrum of the nearby Type Ia supernova 2011fe, obtained 981 d after explosion. SN 2011fe exhibits little evolution since the +593 d optical spectrum, but there are several curious aspects in this new extremely late-time regime. We suggest that the persistence of the ~5800 Å feature is due to Na I D, and that a new emission feature at ~7300 Å may be [Ca II]. Also, we discuss whether the new emission feature at ~6400 Å might be [Fe I] or the high-velocity hydrogen predicted by Mazzali et al. The nebular feature at 5200 Å exhibits a linear velocity evolution of ~350 km s^-1 per 100 d from at least +220 to +980 d, but the line's shape also changes in this time, suggesting that line blending contributes to the evolution. At ~1000 d after explosion, flux from the SN has declined to a point where contribution from a luminous secondary could be detected. In this work, we make the first observational tests for a post-impact remnant star and constrain its temperature and luminosity to T ≳ 104K and L ≲ 10⁴L⊙. Additionally, we do not see any evidence for narrow H α emission in our spectrum. We conclude that observations continue to strongly exclude many single-degenerate scenarios for SN 2011fe.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1512132

Journal Information:: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 454, Issue 2; ISSN 0035-8711

Publisher:: Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 43 works

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