Solving the γ-ray radiative transfer equation for supernovae

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2019-07, Vol.487 (1), p.1218-1226
• Main Authors: Wilk, Kevin D, Hillier, D John, Dessart, Luc
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Astrophysics; Physics; Sciences of the Universe
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz1367

We present a new relativistic radiative transfer code for γ-rays of energy less than 5 MeV in supernova (SN) ejecta. This code computes the opacities, the prompt emissivity (i.e. decay), and the scattering emissivity, and solves for the intensity in the co-moving frame. Because of the large expansion velocities of SN ejecta, we ignore redistribution effects associated with thermal motions. The energy deposition is calculated from the energy removed from the radiation field by scattering or photoelectric absorption. This new code yields comparable results to an independent Monte Carlo code. However, both yield non-trivial differences with the results from a pure absorption treatment of γ-ray transport. A synthetic observer’s frame spectrum is also produced from the co-moving frame intensity. At early times when the optical depth to γ-rays is large, the synthetic spectrum shows asymmetric line profiles with redshifted absorption as seen in SN 2014J. This new code is integrated within cmfgen and allows for an accurate and fast computation of the decay energy deposition in SN ejecta.