Late-Onset Circumstellar Medium Interactions are Rare: An Unbiased GALEX View of Type Ia Supernovae

TL;DR

This study uses archival UV data from GALEX to investigate the frequency of late-onset circumstellar medium interactions in Type Ia supernovae, finding such interactions are rare with occurrence rates below a few percent.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale, unbiased UV observational constraints on late-onset CSM interactions in SNe Ia, combining GALEX data with models and previous HST results.

Findings

Late-onset CSM interactions are rare, with less than 5.1% occurrence within 500 days.

No convincing evidence of CSM interaction was found in the sample.

Constraints on weaker CSM interactions suggest they occur in less than 16% of cases.

Abstract

Using ultraviolet (UV) light curves we constrain the circumstellar environments of 1080 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) within $z<0.5$ from archival Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) observations. All SNe Ia are required to have pre- and post-explosion GALEX observations to ensure adequate subtraction of the host-galaxy flux. Using the late-time GALEX observations we look for the UV excess expected from any interaction between the SN ejecta and circumstellar material (CSM). Four SNe Ia are detected near maximum light and we compare the GALEX photometry to archival data, but we find none of our targets show convincing evidence of CSM interaction. A recent Hubble Space Telescope (HST) survey estimates that $\sim6\%$ of SNe Ia may interact with distant CSM, but statistical inferences are complicated by the small sample size and selection effects. By injecting model light curves into our data and then recovering them, we constrain a broad range of CSM interactions based on the CSM interaction start time and the maximum luminosity. Combining our GALEX non-detections with the HST results, we constrain occurrence of late-onset CSM interaction among SNe Ia with moderate CSM interaction, similar to that observed in PTF11kx, to $f_\text{CSM}\lesssim5.1\%$ between $0-500$ days after discovery and $\lesssim2.7\%$ between $500-1000$ days after discovery at $90\%$ confidence. For weaker CSM interactions similar to SN 2015cp, we obtain limits of $\lesssim16\%$ and $\lesssim4.8\%$, respectively, for the same time ranges.