# The Energy Sources of Superluminous Supernovae

## TL;DR

This review discusses various models explaining the energy sources of superluminous supernovae, emphasizing their importance for understanding stellar evolution and explosion mechanisms.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of different energy-source models and their combinations for superluminous supernovae.

## Key findings

- Multiple models like $^{56}$Ni decay, magnetar spin-down, and ejecta-CSM interaction explain SLSNe luminosity.
- Analyzing light curves and spectra helps determine the dominant energy sources.
- Different models may operate in combination to produce observed SLSNe features.

## Abstract

Supernovae (SNe) are the most brilliant optical stellar-class explosions. Over the past two decades, several optical transient survey projects discovered more than $\sim 100$ so-called superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) whose peak luminosities and radiated energy are $\gtrsim 7\times 10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$ and $\gtrsim 10^{51}$ erg, at least an order of magnitude larger than that of normal SNe. According to their optical spectra features, SLSNe have been split into two broad categories of type I that are hydrogen-deficient and type II that are hydrogen-rich. Investigating and determining the energy sources of SLSNe would be of outstanding importance for understanding the stellar evolution and explosion mechanisms. The energy sources of SLSNe can be determined by analyzing their light curves (LCs) and spectra. The most prevailing models accounting for the SLSN LCs are the $^{56}$Ni cascade decay model, the magnetar spin-down model, the ejecta-CSM interaction model, and the jet-ejecta interaction model. In this \textit{review}, we present several energy-source models and their different combinations.