Fundamental properties of core-collapse Supernova and GRB progenitors: predicting the look of massive stars before death

TL;DR

This study models the properties of massive star progenitors of core-collapse supernovae and gamma-ray bursts, predicting their spectral types and brightness in various filters to aid in pre-explosion identification.

Contribution

It combines stellar evolution and atmospheric models to classify pre-supernova stars and predicts their observational signatures across different supernova types.

Findings

Rotating models produce diverse spectral types for SN progenitors.

SN IIP progenitors are always red supergiants bright in IR filters.

SN Ib and Ic progenitors are faint and often undetectable in pre-explosion images.

Abstract

We investigate the fundamental properties of core-collapse Supernova (SN) progenitors from single stars at solar metallicity. We combine Geneva stellar evolutionary models with initial masses of Mini=20-120 Msun with atmospheric/wind models using CMFGEN. We provide synthetic photometry and high-resolution spectra of hot stars at the pre-SN stage. For Mini=9-20 Msun, we supplement our analysis using publicly available MARCS model atmospheres of RSGs. We employ observational criteria of spectroscopic classification and find that massive stars, depending on Mini and rotation, end their lives as red supergiants (RSG), yellow hypergiants (YHG), luminous blue variables (LBV), and Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars of the WN and WO spectral types. For rotating models, we obtain the following types of SN progenitors: WO1-3 (Mini <= 32 Msun), WN10-11 (25 < Mini < 32 Msun), LBV (20 <= Mini < 25 Msun), G1 Ia+ (18 < Mini < 20 Msun), and RSGs (9 <= Mini <= 18 Msun). For non-rotating models, we find spectral types WO1-3 (Mini>40 Msun), WN7-8 (25 < Mini <= 40 Msun), WN11h/LBV (20 < Mini <= 25 Msun), and RSGs (9 <= Mini <= 20 Msun). Our rotating models indicate that SN IIP progenitors are all RSG, SN IIL/b progenitors are 56% LBVs and 44% YHGs, SN Ib progenitors are 96% WN10-11 and 4% WOs, and SN Ic progenitors are all WO stars. We find that not necessarily the most massive and luminous SN progenitors are the brighter ones in a given filter. We show that SN IIP progenitors (RSGs) are bright in the RIJHK_S filters and faint in the UB filters. SN IIL/b progenitors (LBVs and YHGs), and SN Ib progenitors (WNs) are relatively bright in optical/IR filters, while SN Ic progenitors (WOs) are faint in all optical filters. We argue that SN Ib and Ic progenitors from single stars should be undetectable in the available pre-explosion images with the current magnitude limits, in agreement with observational results.[abridged]