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An aspherical distribution for the explosive burning ash of core-collapse supernovae

Nature Astronomy volume 8, pages 111–118 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

It is widely believed that asphericity in the explosion is the crucial ingredient leading to successful core-collapse (CC) supernovae. However, direct observational evidence for the explosion geometry and for the connection with the progenitor properties are still missing. Based on the thus-far largest late-phase spectroscopic sample of stripped-envelope CC supernovae, we demonstrate that about half of the explosions exhibit a substantial deviation from sphericity. For these aspherical CC supernovae, the spatial distributions of the oxygen-burning ash and the unburnt oxygen, as traced by the profiles of [Ca ii] λλ7291,7323 and [O i] λλ6300,6363 emissions, respectively, appear to be anticorrelated, which can be explained if the explosion is bipolar and the oxygen-rich material burnt into two detached iron-rich bubbles. Our combined analysis of the explosion geometry and the progenitor mass further suggests that the degree of asphericity grows with the mass of the carbon–oxygen core, which may be used to guide state-of-the-art simulations of CC supernova explosions.

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Fig. 1: Nebular spectroscopy of SE supernovae.
Fig. 2: Analysis of the linewidths.
Fig. 3: Configuration of the idealized axisymmetric model.
Fig. 4: The relation between the explosion geometry and the CO core mass of the progenitor.

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Data availability

Most of the spectra are available from WiseRep (https://www.wiserep.org/) and Supernova Database of Berkeley (http://heracles.astro.berkeley.edu/sndb/). The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

Astropy, Matplotlib, Numpy and Scipy are available from the Python Package Index (PyPI) (https://pypi.org/). Upon request, the first author will provide the Python code used to generate the model line profiles.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Jiang, S. Mattila and A. Jerkstrand for reviewing the presubmission manuscript and providing a number of constructive suggestions. Q.F. acknowledges support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through KAKENHI grant 20J23342. K.M. acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI grants JP18H05223, JP20H00174 and JP20H04737. H.K. and T.N. are funded by the Research Council of Finland through projects 324504, 328898 and 353019. This work is supported by the JSPS Open Partnership Bilateral Joint Research Projects between Japan and Finland (K.M. and H.K.; JPJSBP120229923).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Qiliang Fang & Keiichi Maeda

  2. Tuorla Observatory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Hanindyo Kuncarayakti & Takashi Nagao

  3. Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Hanindyo Kuncarayakti

  4. Aalto University Metsähovi Radio Observatory, Kylmälä, Finland

    Takashi Nagao

  5. Aalto University Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, AALTO, Espoo, Finland

    Takashi Nagao

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  1. Qiliang Fang
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Contributions

Q.F., K.M. and T.N. initialized the project. Q.F. led the nebular spectroscopy analysis, model construction and the manuscript preparation. K.M. organized the efforts to interpret the results and assisted in manuscript preparation. H.K. and T.N. contributed to the spectroscopy analysis and interpretations. All authors contributed to the discussions and editing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qiliang Fang or Keiichi Maeda.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Vishnu Varma and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Table 1, Figs. 1–6 and refs. 1–27.

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Fang, Q., Maeda, K., Kuncarayakti, H. et al. An aspherical distribution for the explosive burning ash of core-collapse supernovae. Nat Astron 8, 111–118 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02120-8

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