A statistical study of intermediate Palomar Transient Factory supernovae (SNe) in Type 1 AGN has shown a major deficit of supernovae around Type 1 AGN host galaxies, with respect to Type 2 AGN hosts. The aim of this work is to test whether there is any preference for Type 1 AGN to host SN of a specific kind. Through the analysis of SN occurrence and their type (thermonuclear vs core-collapse), we can directly link the type of stars producing the SN events, thus this is an indirect way to study host galaxies in Type 1 AGN. We examine the detection fractions of SNe, the host galaxies and compare the sample properties to typical host galaxies in the Open Supernova Catalog (OSC; Guillochon et al. 2017). The majority of the host galaxies in the AGN sample are late-type, similar to typical galaxies hosting SN within the OSC. The findings are supportive of a deficiency of SNe near Type 1 AGN, although we cannot with certainty assess the overall detection fractions of SNe in Type 1 AGN relative to other SN host galaxies. We can state that Type 1 AGN has equal detection fractions of thermonuclear vs core-collapse SNe. However, we note the possibility of a higher detection rate of core-collapse supernovae in Type-1 AGN with insecure AGN classifications.
@article{arxiv.2005.02052,
title = {Examining supernova events in Type 1 active galactic nuclei},
author = {Beatriz Villarroel and Iñigo Imaz and Elisabeta Lusso and Sébastien Comerón and M. Almudena Prieto and Paola Marziani and Lars Mattsson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.02052},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
12 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS