A Faint Progenitor System for the Faint Supernova 2024vjm

TL;DR

This paper investigates the progenitor system of the faintest observed Type Iax supernova, SN 2024vjm, using pre-explosion imaging, and suggests it likely originated from a white dwarf with a subdwarf helium star companion, challenging previous models.

Contribution

It provides the first constraints on the progenitor of an extremely faint SN Iax, indicating a possible subdwarf helium star donor and ruling out massive star origins.

Findings

SN 2024vjm's progenitor is fainter than previous Iax candidates.

Faint SNe Iax fade more slowly than bright ones, opposite to the Phillips relation.

Deep imaging rules out massive star progenitors for SN 2024vjm.

Abstract

Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) are well known for their role as standardizable cosmological candles. Their uniformity is credited to their single origin as thermonuclear explosions of White dwarf (WD) stars. Nevertheless, some SNe Ia break this regularity. Prominently, the Iax subclass are less energetic and remarkably diverse, raising questions about their progenitor systems. While no progenitor system of a normal SN Ia has ever been detected, a luminous blue star was identified in pre-explosion images of the site of the bright SN Iax SN 2012Z, suggested to be a helium giant companion star acting as a mass donor to a WD SN progenitor. This is in line with models of weak mass accretion of a WD from a binary companion, producing an explosion that does not fully disrupt the star. However, these models fail to explain the properties of the faintest Type Iax explosions, suggesting either they originate from other WD binary systems, or even from massive progenitor stars. Here, we present the faint SN Iax SN 2024vjm - possibly the faintest supernova observed to date. Using a deep pre-explosion image taken by the recently launched Euclid space mission, we show that its progenitor system must be fainter than the helium giant SN Iax progenitor candidate of SN 2012Z, as well as that of the luminous red companion or remnant of the faint SN 2008ha, and may require a subdwarf helium star as a mass donor. The deep image also provides strong arguments against a massive star origin for this faint supernova. Our observations argue that SN 2024vjm is a WD explosion, but we find that remarkably faint SNe Iax fade more slowly than bright ones, i.e., they evolve in an opposite manner from the famous Phillips relation that makes regular SNe Ia cosmological candles.