Nothing to see here: failed supernovae are faint or rare
Jan 28, 202217 pages
Published in:
- Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 514 (2022) 1, 1188-1205
- Published: Jun 8, 2022
e-Print:
- 2201.12187 [astro-ph.SR]
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Abstract: (Oxford University Press)
The absence of Type IIP core-collapse supernovae arising from progenitors above 17 solar masses suggests the existence of another evolutionary path by which massive stars end their lives. The direct collapse of a stellar core to a black hole without the production of a bright, explosive transient is expected to produce a long-lived, dim, red transient known as a failed supernova. Despite the detection of a number of candidates for disappearing massive stars in recent years, conclusive observational evidence for failed supernovae remains elusive. A custom-built pipeline designed for the detection of faint transients is used to re-analyse 10 yr of observations of 231 nearby galaxies from the PTF/ZTF surveys. This analysis recovers known supernovae, and yields a number of interesting transients. However, none of these are consistent with a failed supernova. Through Monte Carlo tests the recovery efficiency of our pipeline is quantified. By assuming failed supernovae occur as a Poissonian process with zero detections in the data set, 95 per cent upper limits to the rate of failed supernovae are calculated as a function of failed supernova absolute magnitude. We estimate failed supernovae to be less than 0.61, 0.33, 0.26, or 0.23 of the core-collapse SN rate for absolute magnitudes of −11, −12, −13, and −14, respectively. Finally, we show that if they exist, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will find 1.7–3.7 failed SNe per year for an absolute bolometric luminosity of ∼6 × 10^39 erg s^−1 out to distances of 33–43 Mpc, depending on their assumed spectral energy distribution.Note:
- 17 pages, 15 figures, submitted to MNRAS
- stars: evolution
- stars: massive
- supernovae: general
References(83)
Figures(23)