English

Persistent X-ray emission from ASASSN-15lh: massive ejecta and pre-SLSN dense wind?

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2018-06-13 v3

Abstract

The persistent soft X-ray emission from the location of the so-far most luminous supernova (SN), ASASSN-15lh (or SN 2015L), with L1042erg s1L \sim 10^{42} \rm erg~ s^{-1}, is puzzling. We show that it can be explained by radiation from the SN-shock accelerated electrons inverse-Compton scattering the intense UV photons. The non-detection in radio requires strong free-free absorption in the dense medium. In these interpretations, the circumstellar medium is derived to be a wind (nR2n\propto R^{-2}) with mass-loss rate of M˙3×103M(vw/103kms1)yr1\dot M \gtrsim 3 \times10^{-3}M_\odot(v_{\rm w}/10^3 \rm km\,s^{-1}) yr^{-1}, and the initial velocity of the bulk SN ejecta is 0.02c\lesssim 0.02c. These constraints imply a massive ejecta mass of 60(E0/2×1052erg)M\gtrsim 60(E_0/2\times10^{52} \rm erg)M_\odot in \asn, and a strong wind ejected by the progenitor star within 8(vw/103kms1)1\sim8 (v_{\rm w}/10^3 \rm km\,s^{-1})^{-1} yrs before explosion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1801.07517,
  title  = {Persistent X-ray emission from ASASSN-15lh: massive ejecta and pre-SLSN dense wind?},
  author = {Yan Huang and Zhuo Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.07517},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

7 pages, 3 figures and 1 table, Accepted for publication in ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-22T23:52:59.726Z