Theoretical X-ray light curves of young SNe II: the example of SN 2013ej

TL;DR

This paper develops a numerical method to generate X-ray and optical light curves of Type II supernovae from hydrodynamical simulations, and applies it to model SN 2013ej's observations, revealing the importance of CSM density profiles.

Contribution

It introduces a combined hydrodynamical and spectral modeling approach to simulate supernova light curves, constraining circumstellar material properties from multi-wavelength data.

Findings

A model with a steep CSM density slope (~r^{-5}) can reproduce SN 2013ej's optical and X-ray data.

Too extended or steep CSM profiles can overpredict early X-ray emission.

Reproducing both optical and X-ray signals constrains the CSM density structure.

Abstract

The X-ray signal from hydrogen-rich supernovae (SNe II) in the first tens to hundreds of days after the shock breakout encodes important information about the circumstellar material (CSM) surrounding their progenitors before explosion. In this study, we describe a way to generate the SN II X-ray light curves from hydrodynamical simulations performed with the code Athena++, using the X-ray package XSPEC. In addition, we employ a radiation diffusion hydrodynamic code SNEC for generating the optical light curves in different bands. In this numerical setup, we model the X-ray and optical emission from a set of progenitor models, consisting of either two (red supergiant + low density steady wind), or three (red supergiant + dense CSM + low density steady wind) components. We vary the density in the wind and the slope in the CSM to see how these parameters influence the resulting X-ray and optical light curves. Among our models, we identify one that is able to roughly reproduce both optical and X-ray data of the well observed SN 2013ej. In order to achieve this, the slope of the dense CSM in this model should be steeper than the one of a steady wind ($\rho\propto r^{-2}$), and closer to $\rho\propto r^{-5}$. On the other hand, we show that too steep and extended CSM profiles may produce excessive X-ray emission in the first few tens of days, up to a few orders of magnitude larger than observed. We conclude that ability to reproduce the observed X-ray signal from SNe~II together with their optical light curves is crucial in establishing the validity of different CSM models.