CaltechAUTHORS
Published June 10, 2016 | Version Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

PTF 13efv - An outburst 500 days prior to the SNHunt 275 explosion and its radiative efficiency

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Weizmann Institute of Science
  • 2. ROR icon Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • 3. ROR icon Institute for Advanced Study
  • 4. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 5. ROR icon University of Southampton
  • 6. ROR icon Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • 7. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 8. ROR icon Carnegie Observatories
  • 9. ROR icon Stockholm University
  • 10. ROR icon University of Copenhagen

Abstract

The progenitors of some supernovae (SNe) exhibit outbursts with super-Eddington luminosities prior to their final explosions. This behavior is common among SNe IIn, but the driving mechanisms of these precursors are not yet well-understood. SNHunt 275 was announced as a possible new SN during 2015 May. Here we report on pre-explosion observations of the location of this event by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and report the detection of a precursor about 500 days prior to the 2015 May activity (PTF 13efv). The observed velocities in the 2015 transient and its 2013 precursor absorption spectra are low (1000–2000 km s^(−1)), so it is not clear yet if the recent activity indeed marks the final disruption of the progenitor. Regardless of the nature of this event, we use the PTF photometric and spectral observations, as well as Swift-UVOT observations, to constrain the efficiency of the radiated energy relative to the total kinetic energy of the precursor. We find that, using an order-of-magnitude estimate and under the assumption of spherical symmetry, the ratio of the radiated energy to the kinetic energy is in the range of 4 × 10^(−2) to 3.4 × 10^3.

Additional Information

© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2015 September 21; accepted 2016 March 7; published 2016 June 3. We thank M. Graham, P. Kelly, A. Bostroem, I. Shivvers, and W. Zheng for their help obtaining some of the optical spectra. We are also grateful to the staffs of the Palomar, Lick, and Keck Observatories for their excellent assistance. Research at Lick Observatory is partially supported by a generous gift from Google. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA; the observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. E.O.O. is the incumbent of the Arye Dissentshik career development chair and is grateful for support by grants from the Willner Family Leadership Institute Ilan Gluzman (Secaucus NJ), the Israel Science Foundation, Minerva, Weizmann-UK, and the I-Core program by the Israeli Committee for Planning and Budgeting and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). N.J.S. is grateful for the IBM Einstein Fellowship. A.G.Y. is supported by the EU/FP7 via ERC grant No. 307260, the Quantum universe I-Core program by the Israeli Committee for Planning and Budgeting and the ISF; by Minerva and ISF grants; by the Weizmann-UK "making connections" program; and by Kimmel and ARCHES awards. M.S. acknowledges support from the Royal Society and EU/FP7-ERC grant No. 615929. A.V.F.'s research is supported by the Christopher R. Redlich Fund, the TABASGO Foundation, and NSF grant AST-1211916.

Attached Files

Published - apj_824_1_6.pdf

Submitted - 1605.02450v1.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
68891
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20160707-105410507

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.02450 (URL)

Funding

Google
W. M. Keck Foundation
Willner Family Leadership Institute Ilan Gluzman
Israel Science Foundation
MINERVA (Israel)
Weizmann-UK
Israeli Committee for Planning and Budgeting
Kimmel Award
Royal Society
European Research Council (ERC)
615929
Christopher R. Redlich Fund
TABASGO Foundation
NSF
AST-1211916
ARCHES Award
IBM Einstein Fellowship

Dates

Created
2016-07-07
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-11
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Palomar Transient Factory, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)