1304.4967 (Dovi Poznanski)

An Emerging Coherent Picture of Red Supergiant Explosions    [PDF]

Dovi Poznanski

A large fraction of supernovae (SNe) arise from the core collapse of red supergiant stars. By comparing the ejecta velocities of a large sample of such SNe with initial stellar masses derived from pre-explosion images of the progenitor star, I find that there is a significant and approximately linear relation between initial mass and ejecta velocity, which in turn implies that the energy released during core collapse and captured by the ejecta depends strongly on this mass as E is proportional to M^3. This correlation naturally explains why most such SNe have almost identical "plateau-phase" durations in their light curves, and places an important constraint on the elusive physics of core collapse.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4967