Estimating the Explosion Time of Core-Collapse Supernovae from Their Optical Light Curves

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple model to estimate the explosion time of core-collapse supernovae from optical light curves, enabling better temporal coincidence with neutrino signals for multi-messenger astronomy.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, straightforward method for accurately estimating supernova explosion times from light curves, tested on real data from notable supernovae.

Findings

Explosion times can be estimated within a few hours accuracy.

The method is validated on SN1987A, SN2006aj, and SN2008D.

The approach facilitates improved neutrino-supernova coincidence searches.

Abstract

Core-collapse supernovae are among the prime candidate sources of high energy neutrinos. Accordingly, the IceCube collaboration has started a program to search for such a signal. IceCube operates an online search for neutrino bursts, forwarding the directions of candidate events to a network of optical telescopes for immediate follow-up observations. If a supernova is identified from the optical observations, in addition to a directional coincidence a temporal photon-neutrino coincidence also needs to be established. To achieve this, we present a method for estimating the supernova explosion time from its light curve using a simple model. We test the model with supernova light curve data from SN1987A, SN2006aj and SN2008D and show that the explosion times can be determined with an accuracy of better than a few hours.