Poonam Chandra's Academic Page

 

Exploring mysterious Type IIn supernovae

Type IIn supernovae are a heterogeneous family of peculiar objects with a common observational feature -- narrow H-alpha emission atop of broad emission, without broad absorption. This class of supernovae are believed to be powered by vigorous circumstellar interaction. Type IIn supernovae are best known for their association with very different progenitors, e.g., from supernova imposters to superluminous supernovae. Thus Type IIn supernovae remain a mystery with regard to stellar evolution. Some have been linked to Luminous Blue Variables but a star is not expected to explode in this phase of evolution. In some cases, e.g., SN 1994W, there are studies indicating that the explosion was not a terminal one. Even though SNe IIn are rare, they are amongst the X-ray brightest of all Type II SNe, since a very large fraction of the kinetic energy of the ejecta is converted into the electromagnetic radiation via interaction with the circumstellar medium. However, they remain elusive in radio bands.
Peak radio and X-ray luminosities of core collpase supernovae. Type IIn supernovae are marked in red.
Radio light curves and spectra at various epochs of a Type IIn supernova SN 2006jd

Multiwavelength observations are crucial to understand the diversity in this class of supernovae. Radio studies provide diagnostics of the CSM. At the same time X-ray studies determine the shock temperature and also provide unique constraints on the ejecta structure. Thus radio and X-ray bands combined together constrain the past evolution of the progenitor star's mass loss in the stellar wind. Optical emission from these supernovae is likely to be from circumstellar interaction. An IR excess, which is probably due to thermal emission from hot dust, may reveal the extended CS dust surrounding SNe. Hence, understanding the SNe IIn phenomenon requires a complex observational study of their optical, infrared, X-ray and radio emission, and modeling of the emission characteristics in terms of physical models that include ejecta and CSM properties (density, extension, clumpiness, asymmetry).

We have carried out a campaign to understand these supernovae in radio and X-ray bands. So far, we have observed around 50 Type IIn supernovae with the VLA and detected only 4, which are SN 2005kd, SN 2006jd, SN 2008iy, SN 2009ip and SN 2010jl. We have studied suitable candidates with the Chandra, XMM-Newton telescopes and Swift-XRT in X-ray bands. The X-ray detected supernovae in these campaign are SN 2006jd, SN 2009ip and SN 2010jl. All these supernovae have provided us a wealth of observations. In SN 2006jd, the radio absorption have been explained by cool gas mixed in the forward shock. In SN 2010jl, we have wtinessed the evolution of the circumstellar column density for the first time. This is an ongoing campaign and more studies are underway.

References: Chandra et al. 2009 ApJ 690 1839, P. Chandra et al. 2012a, ApJ 755, 110, P. Chandra et al. 2012b, ApJ Letters 750 L2, P. Chandra et al. 2015, submitted to ApJ.

Click in boxes below to see some highlights of our research work.

Understanding mystery of Type IIn Supernovae
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Type IIn supernovae are the most mysterious class of supernovae. Their progenitor stars are a big mystery....

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Radio reverse shocks in Gamma Ray Bursts
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While reverse shocks are seen in one every 24 optical afterglows of gamma ray bursts, they are much more prevalent in radio afterglows...

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Evolution of X-ray absorption in SN 2010jl
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SN 2010jl have revealed a spectacular evolution of the column density from X-ray observations....

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Radio afterglows of Gamma Ray Bursts
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We have studied a catalog of radio afterglow observations of GRBs over a 14 year period from 1997 to 2011...

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Most distant cosmological burst GRB 090423
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Radio detection of a redshift 8.3 GRB 090423 have revealed the environments of the Universe at such high redshift epochs...

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Chromatic jet break in GRB 070125
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Inverse Compton scattering can solve the famous mystery of lack of achromatic jet breaks in a subsample of Swift bursts....

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Circumstellar interaction in Type Ia SN 2006X
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First time spectroscopic evidence of circumstellar matter has been seen in a thermonuclear supernova...

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SGR 1806-20: a violent bomb blast in Milky Way
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Lowest frequency radio emission at 125 cm has been seen in this most violent Galactic explosion .....

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Synchrotron aging in supernova SN 1993J
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First time direct signature of synchrotron aging was seen in VLA and GMRT observations of SN 1993J.

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