Recent studies have suggested the possibility of significantly obscuring super-soft X-ray sources in relatively modest amounts of local matter lost from the binaries themselves. If correct, then this would have explained the paucity of observed super-soft X-ray sources and would have significance for the search for single-degenerate type Ia supernova progenitors. We point out that earlier studies of circumbinary obscuration ignored photo-ionisations of the gas by the emission from the super-soft X-ray source. We revisit the problem using a full, self-consistent calculation of the ionisation state of the circumbinary material photo-ionised by the radiation of the central source. Our results show that the circumstellar mass-loss rates required for obcuration of super-soft X-ray sources is about an order of magnitude larger than those reported in earlier studies, for comparable model parameters. While this does not entrirely rule out the possibility of circumstellar material obscuring super-soft X-ray sources, it makes it unlikely that this effect alone can account for the majority of the missing super-soft X-ray sources. We discuss the observational appearance of hypothetical obscured nuclear burning white dwarfs and show that they have signatures making them distinct from photo-ionised nebulae around super-soft X-ray sources imbedded in the low density ISM.
The X-ray binary LSI +61 303, consisting of a main sequence Be star and a compact object has been detected in the TeV range with MAGIC and VERITAS, and showed a clear intensity modulation as a function of the orbital phase. We describe a gamma-ray attenuation model and apply it to this system. Our first result is that interaction of high energy photons with the background radiation produced by the main sequence star alone does not account for the observed modulation. We then include interactions between very high energy radiation and matter, and are able to constrain fundamental parameters of …
I review multiwavelength observations of material seen around different types of evolved massive stars (i.e. red supergiants, yellow hypergiants, luminous blue variables, B[e] supergiants, and Wolf-Rayet stars), concentrating on diagnostics of mass, composition, and kinetic energy in both local and distant examples. Circumstellar material has significant implications for the evolutionary state of the star, the role of episodic mass loss in stellar evolution, and the roles of binarity and rotation in shaping the ejecta. This mass loss determines the type of supernova that results via the stripp…
We present models of spherically symmetric recurrent nova shells interacting with circumstellar material in a symbiotic system composed of a red giant expelling a wind, and a white dwarf accreting from this material. Recurrent nova eruptions periodically eject material at high velocities ($\gtrsim 10^3$ km/s) into the red giant wind profile, creating a decelerating shock wave as circumstellar material is swept up. High circumstellar material densities cause the shocked wind and ejecta to have very short cooling times of days to weeks. Thus, the late time evolution of the shell is determined by…
Supernovae (SNe) with strong interactions with circumstellar material (CSM) are promising candidate sources of high-energy neutrinos and gamma rays, and have been suggested as an important contributor to Galactic cosmic rays beyond 1 PeV. Taking into account the shock dissipation by a fast velocity component of SN ejecta, we present comprehensive calculations of the non-thermal emission from SNe powered by shock interactions with a dense wind or CSM. Remarkably, we consider electromagnetic cascades in the radiation zone and subsequent attenuation in the pre-shock CSM. A new time-dependent phen…
In this note, we present a detailed self-similar solution to the interaction of a uniformly expanding gas and a stationary ambient medium, with an application to supernovae interacting with preexisting circumstellar media (Type IIn SNe). We implement the generalized solution into the Modular Open Source Fitter for Transients (MOSFiT), an open-source Python package for fitting extragalactic transient light curves.
It has become clear during the last decades that the interaction between the supernova ejecta and the circumstellar medium is playing a major role both for the observational properties of the supernova and for understanding the evolution of the progenitor star leading up to the explosion. In addition, it provides an opportunity to understand the shock physics connected to both thermal and non-thermal processes, including relativistic particle acceleration, radiation processes and the hydrodynamics of shock waves. This chapter has an emphasis on the information we can get from radio and X-ray o…
Hydrogen-rich, core-collapse supernovae are typically divided into four classes: IIP, IIL, IIn, and IIb. In general, interaction with circumstellar material is only considered for Type IIn supernovae. However, recent hydrodynamic modeling of IIP and IIL supernovae requires circumstellar material to reproduce their early light curves. In this scenario, IIL supernovae experience large amounts of mass loss before exploding. We test this hypothesis on ASASSN-15oz, a Type IIL supernova. With extensive follow-up in the X- ray, UV, optical, IR, and radio we present our search for signs of interaction…
Some supernova (SN) explosions show evidence for interaction with pre-existing non-spherically symmetric circumstellar medium (CSM) in their light curves, spectral line profiles, and polarization signatures. To better understand the connection with binary stars and to aid in the interpretation of observations, we perform two-dimensional axisymmetric hydrodynamic simulations where an expanding spherical SN ejecta initialized with realistic density and velocity profiles collide with various aspherical CSM distributions. We consider CSM in the form of a circumstellar disk, colliding wind shells i…
The nature of progenitors of the so-called super-Chandrasekhar candidate Type Ia supernovae (SC-SNe Ia) has been actively debated. Recently, Yamanaka et al. (2016) reported a near-infrared (NIR) excess for SN 2012dn, and proposed that the excess originates from an echo by circumstellar (CS) dust. In this paper, we examine a detailed distribution of the CS dust around SN 2012dn, and investigate implications of the CS dust echo scenario for general cases of SC-SNe Ia. We find that a disk/bipolar CS medium configuration reproduces the NIR excess fairly well, where the radial density distribution …
For supernova powered by the conversion of kinetic energy into radiation due to the interactions of the ejecta with a dense circumstellar shell, we show that there could be X-ray analogues of optically super-luminous SNe with comparable luminosities and energetics. We consider X-ray emission from the forward shock of SNe ejecta colliding into an optically-thin CSM shell, derive simple expressions for the X-ray luminosity as a function of the circumstellar shell characteristics, and discuss the different regimes in which the shock will be radiative or adiabatic, and whether the emission will be…
Usual supernova remnants have either ionizing plasma or plasma in collisional ionization equilibrium, i.e., the ionization temperature is lower than or equal to the electron temperature. However, the existence of recombining supernova remnants, i.e., supernova remnants with the ionization temperature higher than the electron temperature, is recently confirmed. One suggested way to have recombining plasma in a supernova remnant is to have a dense circumstellar medium at the time of the supernova explosion. If the circumstellar medium is dense enough, collisional ionization equilibrium can be es…
Recent supernova searches revealed a number of fast-evolving luminous transients. We perform radiation hydrodynamic simulations of light curves of several models of supernova from super--asymptotic giant branch (super-AGB, SAGB) stars with low mass envelopes ($M_{\rm env}$ $\sim$ $0.05-1.25$ $M_{\odot}$). The differences in the light curves found among the models are used to link the observed events to the most appropriate models. In particular, we propose that KSN 2015K is an electron-capture supernova. We assume "optically" thick CSM around SAGB and the circumstellar interaction powers the p…
The interaction of a SN ejecta with a pre-existing circumstellar material (CSM) is one of the most promising energy sources for a variety of optical transients. Recently, a semi-analytic method developed by Chatzopoulos et al. (2012, hereafter CWV12) has been commonly used to describe the optical light curve behaviors under such a scenario. We find that the expressions for many key results in CWV12 are too complicated for readers to make order of magnitude estimation or parameter dependency judgement. Based on the same physical picture, here we independently re-derive all the formulae and re-e…
We present our results on the γ-ray emission from interaction-powered supernovae (SNe), a recently discovered SN type that is suggested to be surrounded by a circumstellar medium (CSM) with densities 10^7-10^12~ cm^-3. Such high densities favor inelastic collisions between relativistic protons accelerated in the SN blast wave and CSM protons and the production of γ-ray photons through neutral pion decays. Using a numerical code that includes synchrotron radiation, adiabatic losses due to the expansion of the source, photon-photon interactions, proton-proton collisions and proton-photon interac…
Supernovae (SNe) exploding in a dense circumstellar medium (CSM) are predicted to accelerate cosmic rays in collisionless shocks and emit GeV gamma rays and TeV neutrinos on a time scale of several months. Here we summarize the results of the first systematic search for gamma-ray emission in Fermi-LAT data in the energy range from 100 MeV to 300 GeV from a large sample of SNe exploding in dense CSM. We search for a gamma-ray excess at the position of 147 SNe Type IIn in a one year time window after the optical peak time. In addition we combine the closest and optically brightest sources of our…
One of the key observables for determining the progenitor nature of Type Ia supernovae is provided by their immediate circumstellar medium, which according to several models should be shaped by the progenitor binary system. So far, X-ray and radio observations indicate that the surroundings are very tenuous, producing severe upper-limits on the mass loss from winds of the progenitors. In this study, we perform numerical hydro-dynamical simulations of the interaction of the SN ejecta with circumstellar structures formed by possible mass outflows from the progenitor systems and we estimate numer…
The detected polarized radio emission from remnant of SN1987A opens the possibility to unveil the structure of the pre-supernova magnetic field in the circumstellar medium. Properties derived from direct measurements would be of importance for understanding the progenitor stars and their magnetic fields. As the first step to this goal, we adopted the hydrodynamic data from an elaborated three-dimensional (3-D) numerical model of SN1987A. We have developed an approximate method for `reconstruction' of 3-D magnetic field structure inside supernova remnant on the `hydrodynamic background'. This m…
This work aims to study different probes of Type Ia supernova progenitors that have been suggested to be linked to the presence of circumstellar material (CSM). In particular, we have investigated, for the first time, the link between narrow blueshifted NaID absorption profiles and the presence and strength of the broad high-velocity CaII near infrared triplet absorption features seen in Type Ia supernovae around maximum light. With the probes exploring different distances from the supernova; NaID > 10$^{17}$cm, high-velocity CaII features < 10$^{15}$cm. For this, we have used a new intermedia…
We consider the diffusive shock acceleration in interstellar bubbles created by powerful stellar winds of supernova progenitors. Under the moderate stellar wind magnetization the bubbles are filled by the strongly magnetized low density gas. It is shown that the maximum energy of particles accelerated in this environment can exceed the "knee" energy in the observable cosmic ray spectrum.
Kepler's supernova remnant resulted from a thermonuclear explosion, but is interacting with circumstellar material (CSM) lost from the progenitor system. We describe a statistical technique for isolating X-ray emission due to CSM from that due to shocked ejecta. Shocked CSM coincides well in position with 24 $μ$m emission seen by {\sl Spitzer}. We find most CSM to be distributed along the bright north rim, but substantial concentrations are also found projected against the center of the remnant, roughly along a diameter with position angle $\sim 100^\circ$. We interpret this as evidence for a …
A new class of core-collapse supernovae (SNe) has been discovered in recent years by optical/infrared surveys; these SNe suggest the presence of one or more extremely dense (~10^5-10^11 cm^-3) shells of circumstellar material (CSM) on 10^2-10^4 AU scales. We consider the collisions of the SN ejecta with these massive CSM shells as potential cosmic-ray (CR) accelerators. If ~10% of the SN energy goes into CRs, multi-TeV neutrinos and/or GeV-TeV gamma rays almost simultaneous with the optical/infrared light curves are detectable for SNe at <20-30 Mpc. A new type of coordinated multi-messenger se…
Type Ia supernovae are key tools for measuring distances on a cosmic scale. They are generally thought to be the thermonuclear explosion of an accreting white dwarf in a close binary system. The nature of the mass donor is still uncertain. In the single-degenerate model it is a main-sequence star or an evolved star, whereas in the double-degenerate model it is another white dwarf. We show that the velocity structure of absorbing material along the line of sight to 35 type Ia supernovae tends to be blueshifted. These structures are likely signatures of gas outflows from the supernova progenitor…
