CaltechAUTHORS
Published July 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Inferring CSM Properties of Type II SNe Using a Magnitude-Limited ZTF Sample

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Liverpool John Moores University
  • 2. ROR icon Stockholm University
  • 3. ROR icon Northwestern University
  • 4. NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI), 172 E. Chestnut St., Chicago, IL 60611, USA
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • 7. ROR icon The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI
  • 8. ROR icon Monash University
  • 9. ROR icon University of Washington
  • 10. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 11. ROR icon University of Minnesota
  • 12. ROR icon Drexel University

Abstract

Although all Type II supernovae (SNe) originate from massive stars possessing a hydrogen-rich envelope, their light curve morphology is diverse, reflecting poorly characterised heterogeneity in the physical properties of their progenitor systems. Here, we present a detailed light curve analysis of a magnitude-limited sample of 639 Type II SNe from the Zwicky Transient Facility Bright Transient Survey. Using Gaussian processes, we systematically measure empirical light curve features (e.g. rise times, peak colours and luminosities) in a robust sampling-independent manner. We focus on rise times as they are highly sensitive to pre-explosion progenitor properties, especially the presence of a dense circumstellar medium (CSM) shed by the progenitor in the years immediately pre-explosion. By correlating our feature measurements with physical parameters from an extensive grid of STELLA hydrodynamical models with varying progenitor properties (CSM structure, M, R_(CSM) and M_(ZAMS)), we quantify the proportion of events with sufficient pre-explosion mass-loss to significantly alter the initial light curve (roughly M_(CSM) ≥ 10^(−2.5)M⊙) in a highly complete sample of 377 spectroscopically classified Type II SNe. We find that 67 ± 6  per cent of observed SNe in our magnitude-limited sample show evidence for substantial CSM (MCSM ≥ 10^(−2.5)M⊙) close to the progenitor (R_(CSM) < 10¹⁵ cm) at the time of explosion. After applying a volumetric-correction, we find 36⁺⁵₋₇ per cent of all Type II SN progenitors possess substantial CSM within 10¹⁵ cm at the time of explosion. This high fraction of progenitors with dense CSM, supported by photometric and spectroscopic evidence of previous SNe, reveals mass-loss rates significantly exceeding those measured in local group red supergiants or predicted by current theoretical models.

Copyright and License

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-inch and the 60-inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under grants nos AST-1440341 and AST-2034437, and a collaboration including current partners Caltech, IPAC, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, University of California, Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, University of Warwick, Ruhr University, Cornell University, Northwestern University, and Drexel University. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW.

SED Machine is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1106171. The ZTF forced-photometry service was funded under the Heising-Simons Foundation grant no. 12540303 (PI: Graham). The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, through both the Data-Driven Investigator Program and a dedicated grant, provided critical funding for SkyPortal.

Numerical computations were in part carried out on PC cluster at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. TJM is supported by the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JP24K00682, JP24H01824, JP21H04997, JP24H00002, JP24H00027, and JP24K00668) and by the Australian Research Council (ARC) through the ARC’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP240101786).

AAM is partially supported by DoE award no. DE-SC0025599.

WJ-G is supported by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HSTHF2-51558.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555.

This research has made use of the SVO Filter Profile Service ‘Carlos Rodrigo’, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ through grant PID2023-146210NB-I00.

This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology.

MWC acknowledges the support from the National Science Foundation with grant nos PHY-2308862 and PHY-2117997.

Data Availability

Alongside the upcoming publication, Miller et al. (in preparation), there will be a large data release o the ZTF P48 light curves used in this work.

The light curves and empirical properties measured for the SNe, as they relate to this work, can be found here: [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15229515].

Access to the public Bright Transient Survey sample explorer can be found here: [https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/ztf/bts/explorer.php].

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2503.19969 (arXiv)
Is supplemented by
Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.15229515 (DOI)
Dataset: https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/ztf/bts/explorer.php (URL)

Funding

National Science Foundation
AST-1440341
National Science Foundation
AST-2034437
National Science Foundation
1106171
Heising-Simons Foundation
12540303
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
JP24K00682
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
JP24H01824
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
JP21H04997
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
JP24H00002
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
JP24H00027
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
JP24K00668
Australian Research Council
DP240101786
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0025599
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA Hubble Fellowship HST-HF2-51558.001-A
Space Telescope Science Institute
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS5-26555
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
PID2023-146210NB-I00
National Science Foundation
PHY-2308862
National Science Foundation
PHY-2117997

Dates

Accepted
2025-05-28
Available
2025-05-31
Published
Available
2025-06-30
Corrected and typeset

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, Center for Data-Driven Discovery (CDDD), Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Zwicky Transient Facility, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published