Hydrodynamical modeling of the light curves of core collapse supernovae with HYPERION. I. The mass range 13-25 Msun, the metallicities -3<=[Fe/H]<=0 and the case of SN1999em

TL;DR

This paper introduces an advanced hydrodynamic code, Hyperion, to simulate supernova explosions, analyze their light curves, and estimate progenitor star properties, with application to SN 1999em.

Contribution

The paper presents Hyperion, a new hydrodynamic code for modeling supernova explosions and light curves, and demonstrates its use in estimating progenitor star characteristics.

Findings

Hyperion accurately models supernova light curves.

Progenitor mass estimated at 13-15 M_sun for SN 1999em.

Metallicity of progenitor likely between -1 and 0 [Fe/H].

Abstract

We present the last version of {\scshape{Hyperion}} (HYdrodynamic Ppm Explosion with Radiation diffusION), a hydrodynamic code designed to calculate the explosive nucleosynthesis, remnant mass and light curve associated to the explosion of a massive star. By means of this code we compute the explosion of a subset of red supergiant models, taken from the database published by \cite{lc18}, for various explosion energies in the range $\rm \sim 0.20-2.00~10^{51}~erg$. The main outcomes of these simulations, i.e., remnant mass, $\rm ^{56}Ni$ synthesized, luminosity and length of the plateau of the bolometric light curve, are analyzed as a function of the initial parameters of the star (mass and metallicity) and of the explosion energy. As a first application of {\scshape{Hyperion}} we estimated the mass and the metallicity of the progenitor star of SN 1999em, a well studied SN IIP, by means of the light curve fitting. In particular, if the adopted distance to the host galaxy NGC 1637 is $\rm 7.83~Mpc$, the properties of the light curve point toward a progenitor with an initial mass of $\rm 13~M_\odot$ and a metallicity [Fe/H]=-1. If, on the contrary, the adopted distance modulus is $\rm 11.7~Mpc$, all the models with initial mass $13\leq M/M_\odot\leq 15$ and metallicities $\rm -1\leq [Fe/H] \leq 0$ are compatible with the progenitor of SN 1999em.