Fully self-consistent nova explosion models reproducing light curves of KT Eri, V339 Del, V597 Pup, and SMC NOVA 2016-10a

TL;DR

This study develops fully self-consistent nova explosion models to accurately reproduce the early light curves of several classical novae, confirming free-free emission dominance and validating previous WD mass and distance estimates.

Contribution

The paper introduces detailed self-consistent nova explosion models that successfully match observed rising light curves of multiple novae, highlighting free-free emission as the main source.

Findings

Models accurately reproduce observed light curves.

Free-free emission dominates the early optical phase.

Results support previous WD mass and distance estimates.

Abstract

The rising phase toward the optical maximum of a classical nova is one of the last frontiers of nova study. Constructing free-free emission model light curves based on our fully self-consistent nova explosion models, we present several theoretical light curves of classical novae and compare them with the four novae having the observed rising phase toward the optical maximum. Our 1.25 $M_\odot$ white dwarf (WD) models show excellent agreements with the light curves of KT Eri, V339 Del, and V597 Pup while our 1.35 $M_\odot$ WD models are consistent with the light curves of SMC NOVA 2016-10a. These agreements indicate that the light curves toward the optical maximum of these novae are dominated by free-free emission, rather than by photospheric emission. Our results justify the previously obtained WD masses and distance moduli for these novae, and shows that the post-maximum evolution can be well approximated with the evolution sequences of steady-state envelope solutions.