Ranking Theoretical Supernovae Explosion Models from Observations of the Intracluster Gas

TL;DR

This study introduces a non-parametric PDF method to rank supernova explosion models based on their ability to reproduce observed metal abundances in the intracluster medium, enhancing model comparison accuracy.

Contribution

It presents a novel ranking technique for supernova models using spectral data, considering all abundance ratios and uncertainties simultaneously.

Findings

Type II supernovae with nonzero initial metallicity perform better than pair-instability and hypernova models.

3D SNIa models with specific progenitor density perform best among tested models.

The method effectively compares many models and extracts maximum spectral information.

Abstract

The intracluster medium (ICM) is a reservoir of heavy elements synthesized by different supernovae (SNe) types over cosmic history. Different enrichment mechanisms contribute a different relative metal production, predominantly caused by different SNe Type dominance. Using spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy, one can probe the contribution of each metal enrichment mechanism. However, a large variety of physically feasible supernova explosion models make the analysis of the ICM enrichment history more uncertain. This paper presents a non-parametric PDF analysis to rank different theoretical SNe yields models by comparing their performance against observations. Specifically, we apply this new methodology to rank 7192 combinations of core-collapse SN and Type Ia SN models using 8 abundance ratios from $Suzaku$ observations of 18 galaxy systems (clusters and groups) to test their predictions. This novel technique can compare many SN models and maximize spectral information extraction, considering all the individual measurable abundance ratios and their uncertainties. We find that Type II Supernova with nonzero initial metallicity progenitors in general performed better than Pair-Instability SN and Hypernova models and that 3D SNIa models (with the WD progenitor central density of $2.9\times10^9 \mathrm{g\,cm^{-3}}$) performed best among all tested SN model pairs.