The First Ten Years of Swift Supernovae

TL;DR

Over ten years, Swift has extensively observed supernovae across multiple wavelengths, revealing diverse behaviors and aiding understanding of stellar evolution and cosmology.

Contribution

This paper summarizes a decade of Swift supernova observations, highlighting new insights into supernova diversity and their implications for astrophysics.

Findings

Diverse ultraviolet behaviors among supernova types

Identification of distinct groups within Type Ia supernovae

Discovery of shock breakout events in core-collapse supernovae

Abstract

The Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer has proven to be an incredible platform for studying the multiwavelength properties of supernova explosions. In its first ten years, Swift has observed over three hundred supernovae. The ultraviolet observations reveal a complex diversity of behavior across supernova types and classes. Even amongst the standard candle type Ia supernovae, ultraviolet observations reveal distinct groups. When the UVOT data is combined with higher redshift optical data, the relative populations of these groups appear to change with redshift. Among core-collapse supernovae, Swift discovered the shock breakout of two supernovae and the Swift data show a diversity in the cooling phase of the shock breakout of supernovae discovered from the ground and promptly followed up with Swift. Swift observations have resulted in an incredible dataset of UV and X-ray data for comparison with high-redshift supernova observations and theoretical models. Swift's supernova program has the potential to dramatically improve our understanding of stellar life and death as well as the history of our universe.