Inferencing Progenitor and Explosion Properties of Evolving Core-collapse Supernovae from Zwicky Transient Facility Light Curves

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that hydrodynamical models applied to ZTF supernova light curves can effectively estimate progenitor and explosion properties, guiding follow-up observations in real-time, especially for early-stage data.

Contribution

The paper introduces a method for real-time characterization of supernovae using hydrodynamical models, highlighting which parameters can be reliably inferred from incomplete light curves.

Findings

ZAMS mass and explosion time are estimable from early light curves.

Complete light curves are necessary for accurate kinetic energy and nickel mass estimates.

Real-time modeling can prioritize follow-up observations for transient events.

Abstract

We analyze a sample of 45 Type II supernovae from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) public survey using a grid of hydrodynamical models in order to assess whether theoretically-driven forecasts can intelligently guide follow up observations supporting all-sky survey alert streams. We estimate several progenitor properties and explosion physics parameters including zero-age-main-sequence (ZAMS) mass, mass-loss rate, kinetic energy, 56Ni mass synthesized, host extinction, and the time of explosion. Using complete light curves we obtain confident characterizations for 34 events in our sample, with the inferences of the remaining 11 events limited either by poorly constraining data or the boundaries of our model grid. We also simulate real-time characterization of alert stream data by comparing our model grid to various stages of incomplete light curves (t less than 25 days, t less than 50 days, all data), and find that some parameters are more reliable indicators of true values at early epochs than others. Specifically, ZAMS mass, time of explosion, steepness parameter beta, and host extinction are reasonably constrained with incomplete light curve data, whereas mass-loss rate, kinetic energy and 56Ni mass estimates generally require complete light curves spanning greater than 100 days. We conclude that real-time modeling of transients, supported by multi-band synthetic light curves tailored to survey passbands, can be used as a powerful tool to identify critical epochs of follow up observations. Our findings are relevant to identify, prioritize, and coordinate efficient follow up of transients discovered by Vera C. Rubin Observatory.