Kozyreva, A, Hirschi, R, Blinnikov, S and Hartogh, JD (2016) How much radioactive nickel does ASASSN-15lh require? Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 459 (1). ISSN 1365-2966

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Abstract

The discovery of the most luminous supernova ASASSN-15lh triggered a shock-wave in the supernova community. The three possible mechanisms proposed for the majority of other superluminous supernovae do not produce a realistic physical model for this particular supernova. In the present study we show the limiting luminosity available from a nickel-powered pair-instability supernova. We computed a few exotic nickel-powered explosions with a total mass of nickel up to 1500 solar masses. We used the hydrostatic configurations prepared with the GENEVA and MESA codes, and the STELLA radiative-transfer code for following the explosion of these models. We show that 1500 solar masses of radioactive nickel is needed to power a luminosity of 2x10^45 erg/s. The resulting light curve is very broad and incompatible with the shorter ASASSN-15lh time-scale. This rules out a nickel-powered origin of ASASSN-15lh. In addition, we derive a simple peak luminosity - nickel mass relation from our data, which may serve to estimate of nickel mass from observed peak luminosities.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2016 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society
Uncontrolled Keywords: radiative transfer, stars, evolution, massive, supernovae, general, individual, ASASSN-15h
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy > QB460 Astrophysics
Divisions: Faculty of Natural Sciences > School of Physical and Geographical Sciences
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Symplectic
Date Deposited: 23 Nov 2016 14:19
Last Modified: 19 Oct 2017 13:13
URI: https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/2523

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