A Physical Basis for the H-band Blue-edge Velocity and Light-curve Shape Correlation in Context of Type Ia Supernova Explosion Physics Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Our recent work demonstrates a correlation between the high-velocity blue edge, v edge, of the iron-peak Fe/Co/Ni H-band emission feature and the optical light-curve (LC) shape of normal, transitional and subluminous SNe Ia. We explain this correlation in terms of SN Ia physics. v edge corresponds to the sharp transition between the complete and incomplete silicon burning regions in the ejecta. It measures the point in velocity space where the outer 56Ni mass fraction, X Ni, falls to the order of 0.03-0.10. For a given 56Ni mass, M(56Ni), v edge is sensitive to the specific kinetic energy E kin(M(56Ni)/M WD) of the corresponding region. Combining v edge with LC parameters (i.e., s BV, in B and V) allows us to distinguish between explosion scenarios. The correlation between v edge and light-curve shape is consistent with explosion models near the Chandrasekhar limit. However, the available sub-M Ch WD explosion model based on SN 1999by exhibits velocities that are too large to explain the observations. Finally, the subluminous SN 2015bo exhibits signatures of a dynamical merger of two WDs demonstrating diversity among explosion scenarios at the faint end of the SNe Ia population.

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL

altmetric score

  • 0.25

author list (cited authors)

  • Ashall, C., Hoeflich, P., Hsiao, E. Y., Phillips, M. M., Stritzinger, M., Baron, E., ... Taddia, F.

citation count

  • 12

complete list of authors

  • Ashall, C||Hoeflich, P||Hsiao, EY||Phillips, MM||Stritzinger, M||Baron, E||Piro, AL||Burns, C||Contreras, C||Davis, S||Galbany, L||Holmbo, S||Kirshner, RP||Krisciunas, K||Marion, GH||Morrell, N||Sand, DJ||Shahbandeh, M||Suntzeff, NB||Taddia, F

publication date

  • June 2019