Related papers: Observational and Physical Classification of Super…
Natures of progenitors of type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) have not yet been clarified. There has been long and intensive discussion on whether the so-called single degenerate (SD) scenario or the double degenerate (DD) scenario, or anything…
Understanding which stars explode as which type of supernovae (SNe) is crucial to measure their contribution to the metal production and feedback halting star formation. Most of the studies of the gas in the environment of SNe are limited…
Superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) are very bright explosions that were only discovered recently and that show a preference for occurring in faint dwarf galaxies. Understanding why stellar evolution yields different types of stellar…
Empirically, Type Ia supernovae are the most useful, precise, and mature tools for determining astronomical distances. Acting as calibrated candles they revealed the presence of dark energy and are being used to measure its properties.…
During the first few days after explosion, Type II supernovae (SNe) are dominated by relatively simple physics. Theoretical predictions regarding early-time SN light curves in the ultraviolet (UV) and optical bands are thus quite robust. We…
Hydrogen-rich core collapse supernovae, known as "Type II" supernovae, are the most common type of stellar explosion realized in nature. They are defined by the presence of prominent hydrogen lines in their spectra. Type II supernovae are…
Theoretical and observational cosmology have enjoyed a number of significant successes over the last two decades. Cosmic microwave background measurements from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and Planck, together with large-scale…
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…
In the last decade there has been a remarkable increase in our knowledge about core-collapse supernovae (CC-SNe), and the birthplace of neutron stars, from both the observational and the theoretical point of view. Since the 1930's, with the…
Distant Type Ia and II supernovae (SNe) can serve as valuable probes of the history of the cosmic expansion and star formation, and provide important information on their progenitor models. At present, however, there are few observational…
I review recent optical observations of supernovae (SNe) conducted by my group. The Lick Observatory Supernova Search with the 0.76-m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope is currently the world's most successful search for nearby SNe. We…
Although Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are a major tool in cosmology and play a key role in the chemical evolution of galaxies, the nature of their progenitor systems (apart from the fact that they must contain at least one white dwarf, that…
We present a study of 28 Type I superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) in the context of the ejecta mass and photospheric velocity. We combine photometry and spectroscopy to infer ejecta masses via the formalism of radiation diffusion equations.…
We present 645 optical spectra of 73 supernovae (SNe) of Types IIb, Ib, Ic, and broad-lined Ic. All of these types are attributed to the core collapse of massive stars, with varying degrees of intact H and He envelopes before explosion. The…
With the aim of improving our knowledge on supernova (SN) 1987A-like objects and, more in general, on H-rich SNe, we have developed a new analytic model to describe their post-explosive evolution. The distinctive features of this model are…
Type-Ia supernovae (SNe), or runaway thermonuclear explosions of white dwarfs (WDs), play a critical role in the chemical evolution of galaxies, and are important cosmological distance indicators due to their 'standardizable' lightcurves.…
Observations of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) reveal correlations between their luminosities and light-curve shapes, and between their spectral sequence and photometric sequence. Assuming SNe Ia do not evolve at different redshifts, the…
Type IIn supernovae (SNeIIn) are a highly heterogeneous subclass of core-collapse supernovae, spectroscopically characterized by signatures of interaction with a dense circumstellar medium (CSM). Here we systematically model the light…
We present two supernovae (SNe) discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), an HST multi-cycle treasury program. We classify both objects as Type Ia SNe…
Modern photometric surveys of the sky suggest that many, perhaps most supernovae (SNe) associated with the explosion of massive stars are influenced at an appreciable level by their interaction with circumstellar material (CSM). The…