Using Double-peaked Supernova Light Curves to Study Extended Material

TL;DR

This paper investigates how double-peaked supernova light curves can reveal properties of extended material around the progenitor, providing an analytic model and applying it to a specific super-luminous supernova to measure its circumstellar environment.

Contribution

It introduces an analytic model for fitting the first peak of double-peaked supernovae and applies it to a super-luminous supernova to measure the mass and radius of surrounding material.

Findings

Extended material mass is approximately 0.3-0.5 solar masses.

The radius of the extended material can range from 500 to 5000 solar radii.

Degeneracy exists between radius and explosion energy, complicating constraints.

Abstract

Extended material at large radii surrounding a supernova can result in a double-peaked light curve. This occurs when the material is sufficiently massive that the supernova shock continues to propagate into it and sufficiently extended that it produces a bright first peak. Such material can be the leftover, low-mass envelope of a star that has been highly stripped, the mass associated with a wind, or perhaps mass surrounding the progenitor due to some type of pre-explosion activity. I summarize the conditions necessary for such a light curve to occur, describe what can be learned about the extended material from the light curve shape, and provide an analytic model for fitting the first peak in these double-peaked supernovae. This is applied to the specific case of a Type Ic super-luminous supernova, LSQ14bdq. The mass in the extended material around this explosion's progenitor is measured to be small, ~0.3-0.5 Msun. The radius of this material can be ~500-5000 Rsun, but it is difficult to constrain due to a degeneracy between radius and the supernova's energy. In the future, spectra taken during the first peak will be important for measuring the velocity and composition of the extended material so that this degeneracy can be overcome.