Mass discrepancy analysis for a select sample of Type II-Plateau supernovae

MARTINEZ, LAUREANO; BERSTEN, MELINA C.

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

EDP SCIENCES S A

Año: 2019 vol. 629

0004-6361

The detailed study of supernovae (SNe) and their progenitors allows a better understanding of the evolution of massive stars and howthese end their lives. Despite its importance, the range of physical parameters for the most common type of explosion, the type IIsupernovae (SNe II), is still unknown. In particular, previous studies of type II-Plateau supernovae (SNe II-P) showed a discrepancybetween the progenitor masses inferred from hydrodynamic models and those determined from the analysis of direct detections inarchival images.Our goal is to derive physical parameters (progenitor mass, radius, explosion energy and total mass of nickel) through hydrodynamicalmodelling of light curves and expansion velocity evolution for a select group of six SNe II-P (SN 2004A, SN 2004et, SN 2005cs,SN 2008bk, SN 2012aw, and SN 2012ec) that fulfilled the following three criteria: 1) enough photometric and spectroscopic monitoringis available to allow for a reliable hydrodynamical modelling; 2) a direct progenitor detection has been achieved; and 3) there existsconfirmation of the progenitor identification via its disappearance in post-explosion images. We then compare the masses obtained byour hydrodynamic models with those obtained by direct detections of the progenitors to test the existence of such a discrepancy. Asopposed to some previous works, we find good agreement between both methods.We obtain a wide range in the physical parameters for our SN sample. We infer presupernova masses between 10 and 23 M, progenitorradii between 400 and 1250 R, explosion energies between 0.2 and 1.4 foe, and 56Ni masses between 0.0015 and 0.085 M. Ananalysis of possible correlations between different explosion parameters is presented. The clearest relation found is that between themass and the explosion energy, in the sense that more-massive objects produce higher-energy explosions, in agreement with previousstudies. Finally, we also compare our results with previous physical observed parameter relations widely used in the literature. Wefind significant differences between both methods, which indicates that caution should be exercised when using these relations