Papers › Towards Characterization of the Type IIP Supernova Progenitor Population: a...
Towards Characterization of the Type IIP Supernova Progenitor Population: a Statistical Sample of Light Curves from Pan-STARRS1
N. E. Sanders, A. M. Soderberg, S. Gezari, M. Betancourt, R. Chornock, E. Berger, R. J. Foley, P. Challis, M. Drout, R. P. Kirshner, R. Lunnan, G. H. Marion, R. Margutti, R. McKinnon, D. Milisavljevic, G. Narayan, A. Rest, E. Kankare, S. Mattila, S. J. Smartt, M. E. Huber, W. S. Burgett, P. W. Draper, K. W. Hodapp, N. Kaiser, R. P. Kudritzki, E. A. Magnier, N. Metcalfe, J. S. Morgan, P. A. Price, J. L. Tonry, R. J. Wainscoat, C. Waters
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
In recent years, wide-field sky surveys providing deep multi-band imaging have presented a new path for indirectly characterizing the progenitor populations of core-collapse supernovae (SN): systematic light curve studies. We assemble a set of 76 grizy-band Type IIP SN light curves from Pan-STARRS1, obtained over a constant survey program of 4 years and classified using both spectroscopy and machine learning-based photometric techniques. We develop and apply a new Bayesian model for the full multi-band evolution of each light curve in the sample. We find no evidence of a sub-population of fast-declining explosions (historically referred to as "Type IIL" SNe). However, we identify a highly significant relation between the plateau phase decay rate and peak luminosity among our SNe IIP. These results argue in favor of a single parameter, likely determined by initial stellar mass, predominantly controlling the explosions of red supergiants. This relation could also be applied for supernova cosmology, offering a standardizable candle good to an intrinsic scatter of 0.2 mag. We compare each light curve to physical models from hydrodynamic simulations to estimate progenitor initial masses and other properties of the Pan-STARRS1 Type IIP SN sample. We show that correction of systematic discrepancies between modeled and observed SN IIP light curve properties and an expanded grid of progenitor properties, are needed to enable robust progenitor inferences from multi-band light curve samples of this kind. This work will serve as a pathfinder for photometric studies of core-collapse SNe to be conducted through future wide field transient searches.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections