The detection rate of early UV emission from supernovae: A dedicated GALEX/PTF survey and calibrated theoretical estimates

The radius and surface composition of an exploding massive star,as well as the explosion energy per unit mass, can be measured using early UV observations of core collapse supernovae (SNe). We present the first results from a simultaneous GALEX/PTF search for early UV emission from SNe. Six Type II...

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Published in:arXiv.org 2015-02
Main Authors: Ganot, Noam, Gal-Yam, Avishay, Ofek, Eran O, Sagiv, Ilan, Waxman, Eli, Lapid, Ofer, Kulkarni, Shrinivas R, Ben-Ami, Sagi, Kasliwal, Mansi M, Chelouche, Doron, Rafter, Stephen, Behar, Ehud, Laor, Ari, Poznanski, Dovi, Nakar, Udi, Maoz, Dan, Trakhtenbrot, Benny, Neill, James D, Barlow, Thomas A, Martin, Christofer D, Gezari, Suvi, Arcavi, Iair, Bloom, Joshua s, Nugent, Peter E, Sullivan, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collapse
Composition
Cooling curves
Cooling rate
Ejecta
Emission
Explosions
Galaxies
Light curve
Massive stars
Parameter estimation
Stellar evolution
Supergiant stars
Supernovae
Ultraviolet radiation
Wolf-Rayet stars
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Summary:The radius and surface composition of an exploding massive star,as well as the explosion energy per unit mass, can be measured using early UV observations of core collapse supernovae (SNe). We present the first results from a simultaneous GALEX/PTF search for early UV emission from SNe. Six Type II SNe and one Type II superluminous SN (SLSN-II) are clearly detected in the GALEX NUV data. We compare our detection rate with theoretical estimates based on early, shock-cooling UV light curves calculated from models that fit existing Swift and GALEX observations well, combined with volumetric SN rates. We find that our observations are in good agreement with calculated rates assuming that red supergiants (RSGs) explode with fiducial radii of 500 solar, explosion energies of 10^51 erg, and ejecta masses of 10 solar masses. Exploding blue supergiants and Wolf-Rayet stars are poorly constrained. We describe how such observations can be used to derive the progenitor radius, surface composition and explosion energy per unit mass of such SN events, and we demonstrate why UV observations are critical for such measurements. We use the fiducial RSG parameters to estimate the detection rate of SNe during the shock-cooling phase (100 SNe per year (~0.5 SN per deg^2), independent of host galaxy extinction, down to an NUV detection limit of 21.5 mag AB. Our pilot GALEX/PTF project thus convincingly demonstrates that a dedicated, systematic SN survey at the NUV band is a compelling method to study how massive stars end their life.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1412.4063