TOWARD CHARACTERIZATION OF THE TYPE IIP SUPERNOVA PROGENITOR POPULATION: A STATISTICAL SAMPLE OF LIGHT CURVES FROM Pan-STARRS1
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-2421 (United States)
- Department of Statistics, University of Warwick, Coventry (United Kingdom)
- Astronomy Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1002 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801 (United States)
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Väisäläntie 20, 21500 Piikkiö (Finland)
In recent years, wide-field sky surveys providing deep multiband imaging have presented a new path for indirectly characterizing the progenitor populations of core-collapse supernovae (SNe): systematic light-curve studies. We assemble a set of 76 grizy-band Type IIP SN light curves from Pan-STARRS1, obtained over a constant survey program of 4 yr and classified using both spectroscopy and machine-learning-based photometric techniques. We develop and apply a new Bayesian model for the full multiband evolution of each light curve in the sample. We find no evidence of a subpopulation of fast-declining explosions (historically referred to as ''Type IIL'' SNe). However, we identify a highly significant relation between the plateau phase decay rate and peak luminosity among our SNe IIP. These results argue in favor of a single parameter, likely determined by initial stellar mass, predominantly controlling the explosions of red supergiants. This relation could also be applied for SN cosmology, offering a standardizable candle good to an intrinsic scatter of ≲ 0.2 mag. We compare each light curve to physical models from hydrodynamic simulations to estimate progenitor initial masses and other properties of the Pan-STARRS1 Type IIP SN sample. We show that correction of systematic discrepancies between modeled and observed SN IIP light-curve properties and an expanded grid of progenitor properties are needed to enable robust progenitor inferences from multiband light-curve samples of this kind. This work will serve as a pathfinder for photometric studies of core-collapse SNe to be conducted through future wide-field transient searches.
- OSTI ID:
- 22364294
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 799, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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