Constraining red supergiant mass-loss prescriptions through supernova radio properties

TL;DR

This study uses radio observations of Type II supernovae to constrain red supergiant mass-loss rates, finding that the de Jager prescription with luminosity dependence best explains the observed diversity in supernova radio properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the de Jager mass-loss rate with luminosity dependence accurately reproduces the observed radio rise time and luminosity distribution of Type II supernovae.

Findings

De Jager mass-loss rate explains wide spread in radio properties.

Van Loon rate predicts narrower distribution.

Luminosity-dependent mass-loss is essential for accurate modeling.

Abstract

Supernova properties in radio strongly depend on their circumstellar environment and they are an important probe to investigate the mass loss of supernova progenitors. Recently, core-collapse supernova observations in radio have been assembled and the rise time and peak luminosity distribution of core-collapse supernovae at 8.4 GHz has been estimated. In this paper, we constrain the mass-loss prescriptions for red supergiants by using the rise time and peak luminosity distribution of Type II supernovae in radio. We take the de Jager and van Loon mass-loss rates for red supergiants, calculate the rise time and peak luminosity distribution based on them, and compare the results with the observed distribution. We found that the de Jager mass-loss rate explains the widely spread radio rise time and peak luminosity distribution of Type II supernovae well, while the van Loon mass-loss rate predicts a relatively narrow range for the rise time and peak luminosity. We conclude that the mass-loss prescriptions of red supergiants should have strong dependence on the luminosity as in the de Jager mass-loss rate to reproduce the widely spread distribution of the rise time and peak luminosity in radio observed in Type II supernovae.