Superluminous Supernovae Powered by Magnetars: Late-time Light Curves and Hard Emission Leakage

TL;DR

This paper enhances the magnetar-powered model for superluminous supernovae by incorporating hard emission leakage, successfully explaining both early and late-time light curves and addressing previous model limitations.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-analytical equation accounting for hard emission leakage, improving the fit to late-time supernova light curves and providing a more comprehensive model.

Findings

The revised model fits late-time data of several SLSNe.

Hard emission leakage is significant in supernova light curves.

The model suggests gamma-ray and X-ray leakage are unavoidable.

Abstract

Recently, researches performed by two groups have revealed that the magnetar spin-down energy injection model with full energy trapping can explain the early-time light curves of SN 2010gx, SN 2013dg, LSQ12dlf, SSS120810 and CSS121015, but fails to fit the late-time light curves of these Superluminous Supernovae (SLSNe). These results imply that the original magnetar-powered model is challenged in explaining these SLSNe. Our paper aims to simultaneously explain both the early- and late-time data/upper limits by considering the leakage of hard emissions. We incorporate quantitatively the leakage effect into the original magnetar-powered model and derive a new semi-analytical equation. Comparing the light curves reproduced by our revised magnetar-powered model to the observed data and/or upper limits of these five SLSNe, we found that the late-time light curves reproduced by our semi-analytical equation are in good agreement with the late-time observed data and/or upper limits of SN 2010gx, CSS121015, SN 2013dg and LSQ12dlf and the late-time excess of SSS120810, indicating that the magnetar-powered model might be responsible for these SLSNe and that the gamma ray and X-ray leakage are unavoidable when the hard photons were down-Comptonized to softer photons. To determine the details of the leakage effect and unveil the nature of SLSNe, more high quality bolometric light curves and spectra of SLSNe are required.