No Arabic abstract
The brief transient emitted as a shock wave erupts through the surface of a presupernova star carries information about the stellar radius and explosion energy. Here the CASTRO code, which treats radiation transport using multigroup flux-limited diffusion, is used to simulate the light curves and spectra of shock breakout in very low-energy supernovae (VLE SNe), explosions in giant stars with final kinetic energy much less than 10$^{51}$ erg. VLE SNe light curves, computed here with the KEPLER code, are distinctively faint, red, and long-lived, making them challenging to find with transient surveys. The accompanying shock breakouts are brighter, though briefer, and potentially easier to detect. Previous analytic work provides general guidance, but numerical simulations are challenging due to the range of conditions and lack of equilibration between color and effective temperatures. We consider previous analytic work and extend discussions of color temperature and opacity to the lower energy range explored by these events. Since this is the first application of the CASTRO code to shock breakout, test simulations of normal energy shock breakout of SN1987A are carried out and compared with the literature. A set of breakout light curves and spectra are then calculated for VLE SNe with final kinetic energies in the range $10^{47} - 10^{50}$ ergs for red supergiants with main sequence masses 15 Msun and 25 Msun. The importance of uncertainties in stellar atmosphere model, opacity, and ambient medium is discussed, as are observational prospects with current and forthcoming missions.
Dense circumstellar material (CSM) is thought to play an important role in observed luminous optical transients: if such CSM is shocked, e.g. by ejecta expelled from the progenitor during core-collapse, then radiation produced by the shock-heated CSM can power bright UV/optical emission. If the initial CSM has an `outer edge where most of the mass is contained and at which the optical depth is large, then shock breakout -- when photons are first able to escape the shocked CSM -- occurs near this outer edge. The $sim$thin shell of shocked CSM subsequently expands, and in the ensuing cooling-envelope phase, radiative and adiabatic losses compete to expend the CSM thermal energy. Here we derive an analytic solution to the bolometric light-curve produced by such shocked CSM. For the first time, we provide a solution to the cooling-envelope phase that is applicable already starting from shock breakout. In particular, we account for the planar CSM geometry that is relevant at early times and impose physically-motivated initial conditions. We show that these effects can dramatically impact the resulting light-curves, particularly if the CSM optical depth is only marginally larger than $c/v_{rm sh}$ (where $v_{rm sh}$ is the shock velocity). This has important implications for interpreting observed fast optical transients, which have previously been modeled using either computationally-expensive numerical simulations or more simplified models that do not properly capture the early light-curve evolution.
We investigate the properties of X-ray emission from shock breakout of a supernova in a stellar wind. We consider a simple model describing aspherical explosions, in which the shock front with an ellipsoidal shape propagates into the dense circumstellar matter. For this model, both X-ray light curves and spectra are simultaneously calculated using a Monte Carlo method. We show that the shock breakout occurs simultaneously in all directions in a steady and spherically symmetric wind. As a result, even for the aspherical explosion, the rise and decay timescales of the light curve do not significantly depend on the viewing angles. This fact suggests that the light curve of the shock breakout may be used as a probe of the wind mass loss rate. We compare our results with the observed spectrum and light curve of XRO 080109/SN 2008D. The observation can be reproduced by an explosion with a shock velocity of 60% of the speed of light and a circumstellar matter with a mass loss rate of 5.e-4 Msun/yr.
We present theoretical expectations for non-thermal emission due to the bulk Comptonization at the ultra-relativistic shock breakout. We calculate the transfer of photons emitted from the shocked matter with a Monte Carlo code fully taking into account special relativity. As a hydrodynamical model, we use a self-similar solution of Nakayama & Shigeyama (2005). Our calculations reveal that the spectral shape exhibits a double peak or a single peak depending on the shock temperature at the shock breakout. If it is significantly smaller than the rest energy of an electron, the spectrum has a double peak. We also display a few example of light curves, and estimate the total radiation energy. In comparison with observations of gamma-ray bursts, a part of the higher energy component in the spectra and the total energy can be reproduced by some parameter sets. Meanwhile, the lower energy counterpart in the Band function is not reproduced by our results and the duration time seems too short to represent the entire event of a gamma-ray burst. Therefore the subsequent phase will constitute the lower energy part in the spectrum.
Astronomers have proposed a number of mechanisms to produce supernova explosions. Although many of these mechanisms are now not considered primary engines behind supernovae, they do produce transients that will be observed by upcoming ground-based surveys and NASA satellites. Here we present the first radiation-hydrodynamics calculations of the spectra and light curves from three of these failed supernovae: supernovae with considerable fallback, accretion induced collapse of white dwarfs, and energetic helium flashes (also known as type .Ia supernovae).
Shock breakout is the brightest radiative phenomenon in a Type II supernova (SN). Although it was predicted to be bright, the direct observation is difficult due to the short duration and X-ray/ultraviolet-peaked spectra. First entire observations of the shock breakouts of Type II Plateau SNe (SNe IIP) were reported in 2008 by ultraviolet and optical observations by the {it GALEX} satellite and supernova legacy survey (SNLS), named SNLS-04D2dc and SNLS-06D1jd. We present multicolor light curves of a SN IIP, including the shock breakout and plateau, calculated with a multigroup radiation hydrodynamical code {sc STELLA} and an evolutionary progenitor model. The synthetic multicolor light curves reproduce well the observations of SNLS-04D2dc. This is the first study to reproduce the ultraviolet light curve of the shock breakout and the optical light curve of the plateau consistently. We conclude that SNLS-04D2dc is the explosion with a canonical explosion energy $1.2times10^{51}$ ergs and that its progenitor is a star with a zero-age main-sequence mass $20M_odot$ and a presupernova radius $800R_odot$. The model demonstrates that the peak apparent $B$-band magnitude of the shock breakout would be $m_{rm B}sim26.4$ mag if a SN being identical to SNLS-04D2dc occurs at a redshift $z=1$, which can be reached by 8m-class telescopes. The result evidences that the shock breakout has a great potential to detect SNe IIP at $zgsim1$.