The GALEX-PTF Experiment. II. Supernova Progenitor Radius and Energetics via Shock-cooling Modeling

Noam Ganot, Eran O. Ofek, Avishay Gal-Yam*, Steve Schulze, Maayane T. Soumagnac, Jonathan Morag, Eli Waxman, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, Mansi M. Kasliwal, James Neill

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
34 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The radius and surface composition of an exploding massive star, as well as the explosion energy per unit mass, can be measured using early ultraviolet (UV) observations of core-collapse supernovae (CC SNe). We present the results from a simultaneous Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) search for early UV emission from SNe. We analyze five CC SNe for which we obtained near-UV (NUV) measurements before the first ground-based R-band detection. We introduce SOPRANOS, a new maximum likelihood fitting tool for models with variable temporal validity windows, and use it to fit the Sapir & Waxman shock-cooling model to the data. We report four Type II SNe with progenitor radii in the range of R* ≈ 600–1100 R⊙ and a shock velocity parameter in the range of vs* ≈ 2700–6000 km s−1 (E/M ≈ 2–8 × 1050 erg/M⊙) and one Type IIb SN with R* ≈ 210 R⊙ and vs* ≈ 11,000 km s−1 (E/M ≈ 1.8 × 1051 erg/M⊙). Our pilot GALEX/PTF project thus suggests that a dedicated, systematic SN survey in the NUV band, such as the wide-field UV explorer ULTRASAT mission, is a compelling method to study the properties of SN progenitors and SN energetics.
Original languageEnglish
Article number71
Number of pages21
JournalThe Astrophysical journal
Volume931
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 May 2022

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