Time-varying sodium absorption in the Type Ia supernova 2013gh

Creators: Ferretti, R.; Amanullah, R.; Goobar, A.; Johansson, J.; Vreeswijk, P. M.; Butler, R. P.; Cao, Y.; Cenko, S. B.; Doran, G.; Filippenko, A. V.; Freeland, E.; Hosseinzadeh, G.; Howell, D. A.; Lundqvist, P.; Mattila, S.; Nordin, J.; Nugent, P. E.; Petrushevska, T.; Valenti, S.; Vogt, S. S.; Wozniak, P.

Abstract

Context. Temporal variability of narrow absorption lines in high-resolution spectra of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is studied to search for circumstellar matter. Time series which resolve the profiles of absorption lines such as Na I D or Ca II H&K are expected to reveal variations due to photoionisation and subsequent recombination of the gases. The presence, composition, and geometry of circumstellar matter may hint at the elusive progenitor system of SNe Ia and could also affect the observed reddening law. Aims. To date, there are few known cases of time-varying Na I D absorption in SNe Ia, all of which occurred during relatively late phases of the supernova (SN) evolution. Photoionisation, however, is predicted to occur during the early phases of SNe Ia, when the supernovae peak in the ultraviolet. We attempt, therefore, to observe early-time absorption-line variations by obtaining high-resolution spectra of SNe before maximum light. Methods. We have obtained photometry and high-resolution spectroscopy of SNe Ia 2013gh and iPTF 13dge, to search for absorption-line variations. Furthermore, we study interstellar absorption features in relation to the observed photometric colours of the SNe. Results. Both SNe display deep Na I D and Ca II H&K absorption features. Furthermore, small but significant variations are detected in a feature of the Na I D profile of SN 2013gh. The variations are consistent with either geometric effects of rapidly moving or patchy gas clouds or photoionisation of Na I gas at R ≈ 10^(19) cm from the explosion. Conclusions. Our analysis indicates that it is necessary to focus on early phases to detect photoionisation effects of gases in the circumstellar medium of SNe Ia. Different absorbers such as Na I and Ca II can be used to probe for matter at different distances from the SNe. The nondetection of variations during early phases makes it possible to put limits on the abundance of the species at those distances.

Additional Information

© 2016 ESO. Received: 19 February 2016. Accepted: 2 May 2016. Published online: 18 July 2016. We would like to thank Alexis Brandeker for assisting us with the UVES data, Jesper Sollerman for his helpful comments, and Daniela Vergani for sharing graphs of the VLA H I data. R.A. and A.G. acknowledge support from the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Space Board. The Oskar Klein Centre is funded by the Swedish Research Council. A.V.F.'s research was funded by US NSF grant AST-1211916, the TABASGO Foundation, and the Christopher R. Redlich Fund. This work is based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programme 091.D-0352(A). We made use of Swift/UVOT data reduced by P. J. Brown and released in the Swift Optical/Ultraviolet Supernova Archive (SOUSA). SOUSA is supported by NASA's Astrophysics Data Analysis Program through grant NNX13AF35G. This work is 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. 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. This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. 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 recognise 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. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. LANL participation in iPTF was funded by the US Department of Energy as part of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. A portion of this work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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