Comparison of Diversity of Type IIb Supernovae with Asymmetry in Cassiopeia A Using Light Echoes

TL;DR

This study compares the spectral line velocity diversity of Type IIb supernovae with the asphericity observed in Cassiopeia A through light echoes, suggesting asphericity may explain velocity variations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the observed velocity diversity in SNe IIb can be attributed to explosion asphericity, using light echo analysis of Cassiopeia A and comparison with extragalactic supernova spectra.

Findings

Velocity ranges in Cas A light echoes match those in SNe IIb.

Asphericity could account for the observed velocity diversity.

Light echo analysis improves understanding of supernova explosion geometry.

Abstract

We compare the diversity of spectral line velocities in a large sample of type IIb supernovae (SNe IIb) with the expected asphericity in the explosion, as measured from the light echoes of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), which was a historical galactic SN IIb. We revisit the results of Rest et al. (2011a), who used light echoes to observe Cas A from multiple lines of sight and hence determine its asphericity, as seen in the velocity of three spectral lines (He I $\lambda$5876, H$\alpha$ and the Ca II NIR triplet). We confirm and improve on this measurement by reproducing the effect of the light echoes in the spectra of several extragalactic SNe IIb found in the literature as well as mean SN IIb spectra recently created by Liu et al. (2016), and comparing these to the observed light echo spectra of Cas A, including their associated uncertainties. In order to quantify the accuracy of this comparison we smooth the light echo spectra of Cas A using Gaussian processes and use a Monte Carlo method to measure the absorption velocities of these three features in the spectra. We then test the hypothesis that the diversity of ejecta velocities seen in SNe IIb can be explained by asphericity. We do this by comparing the range of velocities seen in the different light echoes, and hence different lines of sight, of Cas A to that seen in the population of SNe IIb. We conclude that these two ranges are of the same order and thus asphericity could be enough to explain the diversity in the expansion velocity alone.