Exploring the Geometry of the Brightest SupernovaeJennifer L. Hoffman, R.C. Thomas, Peter Nugent,Douglas C. Leonard, and Alexei V. Filippenko 2005 AAS, 205, 7116 PDF (926 K) |
| In the hierarchy of supernova explosions, the most luminous
events (MV ~ -20) belong to the subclass known as Type IIn.
Though not all Type IIn's reach such huge brightnesses, spectra of
these objects consistently reveal intense interaction between the
supernova ejecta and dense circumstellar matter configurations; the
prodigious optical output of the brightest Type IIn supernovae is
powered by this interaction rather than by a process intrinsic to the
explosion mechanism. In polarized light, Type IIn's show intriguing
features such as multiple polarization axes and highly polarized
emission lines offset from the lines in the flux spectrum. We
investigate ways in which such polarization spectra can be produced at
early times in a supernova's evolution by modeling the transfer of
supernova spectra through circumstellar shells with various geometrical
configurations. Our approach combines 3-D spectrum synthesis and Monte
Carlo radiative transfer codes; we compare our results with
high-quality spectropolarimetric observations of Type IIn supernovae. J.L. Hoffman is supported by an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-0302123. This research uses the resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. |
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For more information, please send email to Jennifer. January 20, 2005 |