Synthetic Light Curves of Shocked Dense Circumstellar Shells

TL;DR

This study uses numerical radiation hydrodynamics to analyze the light curves of shocked circumstellar shells, revealing significant effects of recombination and bolometric correction, and comparing their results to observed superluminous supernovae.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis of shocked circumstellar shells' light curves, highlighting the importance of recombination and bolometric corrections.

Findings

Recombination and bolometric correction significantly affect light curve shapes.

Shocked shells decline rapidly due to adiabatic expansion, not luminosity increase.

Synthetic light curves resemble those of certain superluminous supernovae.

Abstract

We numerically investigate light curves (LCs) of shocked circumstellar shells which are suggested to reproduce the observed LC of superluminous SN 2006gy analytically. In the previous analytical model, the effects of the recombination and the bolometric correction on LCs are not taken into account. To see the effects, we perform numerical radiation hydrodynamic calculations of shocked shells by using STELLA, which can numerically treat multigroup radiation transfer with realistic opacities. We show that the effects of the recombination and the bolometric correction are significant and the analytical model should be compare to the bolometric LC instead of a single band LC. We find that shocked circumstellar shells have a rapid LC decline initially because of the adiabatic expansion rather than the luminosity increase and the shocked shells fail to explain the LC properties of SN 2006gy. However, our synthetic LCs are qualitatively similar to those of superluminous SN 2003ma and SN 1988Z and they may be related to shocked circumstellar shells.