CHIPS: Complete History of Interaction-Powered Supernovae

TL;DR

CHIPS is a publicly available simulation code that models the formation of circumstellar media and resulting supernova light curves, providing insights into various interaction-powered transients.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent simulation tool for modeling CSM creation and supernova light curves, advancing beyond previous models that manually attach CSM.

Findings

Successfully reproduces light curves of Type IIn supernovae

Explains fast blue optical transients with interaction models

Demonstrates the importance of CSM in transient diversity

Abstract

We present the public release of the Complete History of Interaction-Powered Supernovae (CHIPS) code, suited to model a variety of transients that arise from interaction with a dense circumstellar medium (CSM). Contrary to existing modellings which mostly attach the CSM by hand, CHIPS self-consistently simulates both the creation of the CSM from mass eruption of massive stars prior to core-collapse, and the subsequent supernova light curve. We demonstrate the performance of CHIPS by presenting examples of the density profiles of the CSM and the light curves. We show that the gross light curve properties of putative interaction-powered transients, such as Type IIn supernovae, rapidly evolving transients and recently discovered fast blue optical transients, can be comprehensively explained with the output of CHIPS.