A Large Fraction of Hydrogen-rich Supernova Progenitors Experience Elevated Mass Loss Shortly Prior to Explosion

Creators: Bruch, Rachel J.; Gal-Yam, Avishay; Schulze, Steve; Yaron, Ofer; Yang, Yi; Soumagnac, Maayane; Rigault, Mickael; Strotjohann, Nora L.; Ofek, Eran O.; Sollerman, Jesper; Masci, Frank J.; Barbarino, Cristina; Ho, Anna Y. Q.; Fremling, Christoffer; Perley, Daniel; Nordin, Jakob; Cenko, S. Bradley; Adams, S.; Adreoni, Igor; Bellm, Eric C.; Blagorodnova, Nadia; Bulla, Mattia; Burdge, Kevin; De, Kishalay; Dhawan, Suhail; Drake, Andrew J.; Duev, Dmitry A.; Dugas, Alison; Graham, Matthew; Graham, Melissa L.; Irani, Ido; Jencson, Jacob; Karamehmetoglu, Emir; Kasliwal, Mansi; Kim, Young-Lo; Kulkarni, Shrinivas; Kupfer, Thomas; Liang, Jingyi; Mahabal, Ashish; Miller, A. A.; Prince, Thomas A.; Riddle, Reed; Sharma, Y.; Smith, Roger; Taddia, Francesco; Taggart, Kirsty; Walters, Richard; Yan, Lin

Abstract

Spectroscopic detection of narrow emission lines traces the presence of circumstellar mass distributions around massive stars exploding as core-collapse supernovae. Transient emission lines disappearing shortly after the supernova explosion suggest that the material spatial extent is compact and implies an increased mass loss shortly prior to explosion. Here, we present a systematic survey for such transient emission lines (Flash Spectroscopy) among Type II supernovae detected in the first year of the Zwicky Transient Facility survey. We find that at least six out of ten events for which a spectrum was obtained within two days of the estimated explosion time show evidence for such transient flash lines. Our measured flash event fraction (>30% at 95% confidence level) indicates that elevated mass loss is a common process occurring in massive stars that are about to explode as supernovae.

Additional Information

© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 October 8; revised 2021 March 7; accepted 2021 March 14; published 2021 May 4. AGY's research is supported by the EU via ERC grant No. 725161, the ISF GW excellence center, an IMOS space infrastructure grant and BSF/Transformative, Minerva and GIF grants, as well as The Benoziyo Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Science, the Deloro Institute for Advanced Research in Space and Optics, The Kimmel Center for planetary science, The Veronika A. Rabl Physics Discretionary Fund, Paul and Tina Gardner, Yeda-Sela and the WIS-CIT joint research grant; AGY is the recipient of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Award for Innovative Investigation. The ztfquery code was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 759194—USNAC, PI: Rigault). The ZTF forced-photometry service was funded under the Heising-Simons Foundation grant #12540303 (PI: Graham). Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin 48 inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1440341 and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute for Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, Los Alamos National Laboratories, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. The data presented here were obtained [in part] with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOTSA. A.A.M. is funded by the LSST Corporation, the Brinson Foundation, and the Moore Foundation in support of the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program; he also receives support as a CIERA Fellow by the CIERA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, Northwestern University). Based on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). 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. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2013-2016) under grant agreement No. 312430 (OPTICON).

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