Related papers: Extended supernova shock breakout signals from inf…
Type II supernovae (SNe) originate from the explosion of hydrogen-rich supergiant massive stars. Their first electromagnetic signature is the shock breakout, a short-lived phenomenon which can last from hours to days depending on the…
Extended material at large radii surrounding a supernova can result in a double-peaked light curve. This occurs when the material is sufficiently massive that the supernova shock continues to propagate into it and sufficiently extended that…
We examine the case where a circumstellar medium around a supernova is sufficiently opaque that a radiation dominated shock propagates in the circumstellar region. The initial propagation of the shock front into the circumstellar region can…
Recently, a soft black-body component was observed in the early X-ray afterglow of GRB 060218, which was interpreted as shock breakout from the thick wind of the progenitor Wolf-Rayet (WR) star of the underlying Type Ic SN 2006aj. In this…
Early observations of supernova light curves are powerful tools for shedding light on the pre-explosion structures of their progenitors and their mass-loss histories just prior to explosion. Some core-collapse supernovae that are detected…
Supernovae shape the interstellar medium, chemically enrich their host galaxies, and generate powerful interstellar shocks that drive future generations of star formation. The shock produced by a supernova event acts as a type of time…
Wolf-Rayet stars are known to eject winds. Thus, when a Wolf-Rayet star explodes as a supernova, a fast, $>30,000$ km/s, shock is expected to be driven through a wind. We study the signal expected from a fast supernova shock propagating…
Wave-driven outflows and non-disruptive explosions have been implicated in pre-supernova outbursts, supernova impostors, LBV eruptions, and some narrow-line and superluminous supernovae. To model these events, we investigate the dynamics of…
Hydrostatic models of Wolf-Rayet stars typically contain low-density outer envelopes that inflate the stellar radii by a factor of several and are capped by a denser shell of gas. Inflated envelopes and density inversions are hallmarks of…
Massive stars end their short lives in spectacular explosions, supernovae, that synthesize new elements and drive galaxy evolution. Throughout history supernovae were discovered chiefly through their delayed optical light, preventing…
In February 2006, Swift caught a GRB in the act of turning into a supernova, and made the first ever direct observations of the break-out and early expansion of a supernova shock wave. GRB 060218 began with an exceptionally long burst of…
Core-collapse supernovae span a wide range of energies, from much less than to much greater than the binding energy of the progenitor star. As a result, the shock wave generated from a supernova explosion can have a wide range of Mach…
Shock breakout is the earliest, readily-observable emission from a core-collapse supernova explosion. Observing supernova shock breakout may yield information about the nature of the supernova shock prior to exiting the progenitor and, in…
Knowledge of the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae is a fundamental component in understanding the explosions. The recent progress in finding such stars is reviewed. The minimum initial mass that can produce a supernova has converged…
We model the late evolution and mass loss history of rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet stars in the mass range $5\,\rm{M}_{\odot}\dots 100\,\rm{M}_{\odot}$. We find that quasi-chemically homogeneously evolving single stars computed with enhanced…
We carry out a systematic study of the response of companion stars in massive binaries after being impacted by supernova ejecta. A total of 720 1D stellar evolution calculations are performed to follow the inflation and contraction of the…
We propose an alternative explanation for the post-breakout emission of SN 2008D associated with the X-ray transient 080109. Observations of this object show a very small contrast of 0.35 dex between the light-curve minimum occurring soon…
We investigate the acceleration of shock waves to relativistic velocities in the outer layers of exploding stars. By concentrating the explosion energy in the outermost ejecta, such trans-relativistic blast waves can serve as the…
We present the first three-dimensional study of the asymptotic ejecta distributions for a suite of theoretical Type IIp supernovae originating from red supergiant progenitors. We simulate using the radiation-hydrodynamic code F{\sc{ornax}}…
When the ejecta of supernovae interact with the progenitor star's circumstellar environment, a strong shock is driven back into the ejecta, causing the material to become bright optically and in X-rays. Most notably, as the shock traverses…