Published September 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Twin Peaks: SN 2021uvy and SN 2022hgk in the Landscape of Double-peaked Stripped Envelope Supernovae

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Stockholm University
  • 3. ROR icon University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
  • 4. ROR icon University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
  • 5. ROR icon Northwestern University
  • 6. ROR icon Liverpool John Moores University
  • 7. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 8. ROR icon University of Minnesota
  • 9. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 10. ROR icon The Ohio State University
  • 11. ROR icon University of Washington
  • 12. ROR icon New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

In recent years, a class of stripped-envelope supernovae (SESNe) has emerged that show two distinct peaks in their light curves, where the first peak cannot be attributed to shock cooling emission. Such peculiar supernovae are often studied individually, explained by invoking some combination of powering mechanisms. However, they have seldom been discussed in the broader context of double-peaked SESNe. In this paper, we attempt to form a picture of the landscape of double-peaked SESNe and their powering mechanisms by adding two more objects—SN 2021uvy and SN 2022hgk. SN 2021uvy is a broad and luminous SN Ib with an unusually long rise of the first peak and constant color evolution with rising photospheric temperature during the second peak. Although its first peak is similar to that of SN 2019stc, their second peaks differ in properties, making it unique among double-peaked objects. SN 2022hgk shows striking photometric similarity to SN 2019cad and spectroscopic similarity to SN 2005bf, both of which have been suggested to be powered by a double-nickel distribution in their ejecta. We analyze their light curves and colors, compare them with a sample of other double-peaked published supernovae for which we have additional data, and analyze the light curve parameters of the sample. We observe a correlation (p-value ∼ 0.025) between the peak absolute magnitudes of the first and second peaks. The sample shows variety in the photometric and spectroscopic properties, and thus no single definitive powering mechanism applies to the whole sample. However, sub-groups of similarity exist that can be explained by mechanisms like the double-nickel distribution, magnetar central engine, interaction, and fallback accretion. We also map out the duration between the peaks (Δt21) versus the difference between peak absolute magnitudes (ΔM21) as a phase-space that could potentially delineate the most promising powering mechanisms for the double-peaked SESNe.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP). Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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 grant 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 Bochum, Cornell University, Northwestern University, and Drexel University. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. The ZTF forced-photometry service was funded under the Heising-Simons Foundation grant #12540303 (PI: Graham). SED Machine is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. 1106171. This work was supported by the GROWTH project (Kasliwal et al. 2019) funded by the National Science Foundation under PIRE grant No. 1545949. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, through both the Data-Driven Investigator Program and a dedicated grant, provided critical funding for SkyPortal. The Oskar Klein Centre was funded by the Swedish Research Council. Partially based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated by the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. Some of the data presented here were obtained with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOT. 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. This work has made use of data from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project is primarily funded to search for near earth asteroids through NASA grants NN12AR55G, 80NSSC18K0284, and 80NSSC18K1575; byproducts of the NEO search include images and catalogs from the survey area. The ATLAS science products have been made possible through the contributions of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, the Queen’s University Belfast, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the South African Astronomical Observatory, and The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS), Chile. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology. The Liverpool Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias with financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Y.S. thanks the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program, which is funded by LSSTC, NSF Cybertraining grant #1829740, the Brinson Foundation, and the Moore Foundation; her participation in the program has benefited this work.

M.W.C. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation with grant Nos. PHY-2308862 and PHY-2117997.

Software References

Fritz (van der Walt et al. 2019; Coughlin et al. 2023) and GROWTH marshal (Kasliwal et al. 2019) (dynamic collaborative platforms for time-domain astronomy) were used in this work.

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2507.03822 (arXiv)
Is supplemented by
Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.15786071 (DOI)

Funding

National Science Foundation
AST-1440341
National Science Foundation
AST-2034437
Heising-Simons Foundation
12540303
National Science Foundation
1106171
National Science Foundation
1545949
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
W. M. Keck Foundation
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NN12AR55G
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC18K0284
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC18K1575
National Science Foundation
OAC-1829740
Brinson Foundation
National Science Foundation
PHY-2308862
National Science Foundation
PHY-2117997

Dates

Accepted
2025-09-03
Available
2025-09-22
Published online

Caltech Custom Metadata

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