Probing the Explosion Mechanism of Supernovae by Radioactive Decay Gamma- and X-Rays

TL;DR

This paper explores how gamma- and X-ray emissions from radioactive decay can reveal detailed explosion mechanisms of supernovae, especially in bipolar jet models, by analyzing spectral features to determine explosion properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates that high-energy emission features can uniquely identify supernova explosion energy, radioactive nickel amount, geometry, and viewing angle in bipolar jet models.

Findings

High-energy emissions depend on explosion properties.

Spectral analysis can determine explosion energy and nickel mass.

Observations can reveal explosion geometry and orientation.

Abstract

Gamma- and X-rays resulting from radioactive decays provide a potentially powerful tool to investigate the explosion physics of supernovae, since the distribution and the amount of radioactive isotopes are strongly dependent on properties of the explosion. In this paper, expected features of these high energy emissions are presented for bipolar jet-induced explosion models, which are recently favored for very energetic supernovae and even for typical Type Ib/c supernovae. It is shown that combination of various observations, i.e., line-to-continuum ratio, photoelectric absorption cut-off energy, line profiles and luminosities, allows the unique determination of the explosion energy, the amount of radioactive 56Ni, the explosion geometry, and even the viewing orientation.