Shock Cooling Emission from Extended Material Revisited

Abstract

Following shock breakout, the emission from an astrophysical explosion is dominated by the radiation of shock-heated material as it expands and cools, known as shock cooling emission (SCE). The luminosity of SCE is proportional to the initial radius of the emitting material, which makes its measurement useful for investigating the progenitors of these explosions. Recent observations have shown some transient events have especially prominent SCE, indicating a large radius that is potentially due to low-mass extended material. Motivated by this, we present an updated analytic model for SCE that can be utilized to fit these observations and learn more about the origin of these events. This model is compared with numerical simulations to assess its validity and limitations. We also discuss SN 2016gkg and SN 2019dge, two transients with large early luminosity peaks that have previously been attributed to SCE of extended material. We show that their early power-law evolution and photometry are well matched by our model, strengthening support for this interpretation.

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