The Hydrogen-Poor Superluminous Supernovae from the Zwicky Transient Facility Phase-I Survey: II. Light Curve Modeling and Analysis

Creators: Chen, Z. H.; Yan, Lin; Kangas, T.; Lunnan, R.; Sollerman, J.; Schulze, S.; Perley, D. A.; Chen, T.-W.; Gal-Yam, A.; Wang, X. F.; De, K.; Taggart, K.; Bellm, E.; Bloom, J. S.; Dekany, R.; Graham, M.; Kasliwal, M.; Kulkarni, S.; Laher, R.; Neill, D.; Rusholme, B.

Abstract

We present analysis of the light curves (LCs) of 77 hydrogen-poor superluminous supernovae (SLSNe-I) discovered during the Zwicky Transient Facility Phase-I operation. We find that the majority (67%) of the sample can be fit equally well by both magnetar and ejecta-circumstellar medium (CSM) interaction plus ⁵⁶Ni decay models. This implies that LCs alone can not unambiguously constrain the physical power sources for SLSNe-I. However, 20% of the sample show clear signatures such as inverted V-shape or steep declining LCs, which are better described by the CSM+Ni model. The remaining 13% of the sample favor the magnetar model. Moreover, our analysis shows that LC undulations are quite common, observed in 34−62% of the sample, depending on the strength of the undulations and the quality of the LCs. The majority (73%) of the undulations occur post-peak and "bumps"/"dips" each account for around half of the undulations. Undulations show a wide range in energy and duration, with median values and 1σ errors of 1.8%^(+3.4%)_(−0.9%) E_(rad,total) and 26.2^(+22.6)_(−10.7) days, respectively. Our analysis of the undulation time scales suggests that intrinsic temporal variations of the central engine can explain half of the undulating events, while CSM interaction can account for the majority of the sample. Finally, all of the well-observed He-rich SLSNe-Ib have either strongly undulating LCs or the LCs are much better fit by the CSM+Ni model. These observations imply that their progenitor stars have not had enough time to lose all of the He-envelopes before supernova explosions, and H-poor CSM are likely to present in these events.

Additional Information

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). We thank Dr. Weili Lin from Tsinghua University for useful discussions of CSM modeling of SLSN-I LCs. 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 No. AST-1440341 and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute for Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, Los Alamos National Laboratories, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. SED Machine is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1106171. The ZTF forced-photometry service was funded under the Heising-Simons Foundation grant #12540303 (PI: Graham). 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. The Nordic Optical Telescope is owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University, and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland and Norway, the University of Iceland and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. This research has made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. This work was supported by the GROWTH project funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1545949. S. S. acknowledges support from the G.R.E.A.T research environment, funded by Vetenskapsrådet, the Swedish Research Council, project number 2016-06012. T.-W. C. acknowledges the EU Funding under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant H2020-MSCA-IF-2018-842471. T. K. acknowledges support from the Swedish National Space Agency and the Swedish Research Council. A. Gal-Yam acknowledges support from the EU via ERC grant No. 725161, the ISF GW excellence center, an IMOS space infrastructure grant and BSF/Transformative and GIF grants, as well as the André Deloro Institute for Advanced Research in Space and Optics, the Schwartz/Reisman Collaborative Science Program and the Norman E Alexander Family M Foundation ULTRASAT Data Center Fund, Minerva and Yeda-Sela. R. L. acknowledges support from a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship within the Horizon 2020 European Union (EU) Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017-794467). The work of X. Wang is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC grants 12033003 and 11633002), the Major State Basic Research Development Program (grant 2016YFA0400803), the Scholar Program of Beijing Academy of Science and Technology (DZ:BS202002), and the Tencent XPLORER Prize. Software: MOSFiT (Guillochon et al. 2018) , dynesty (Speagle 2020).

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