A Potential Progenitor for the Type Ic Supernova 2017ein

Abstract

We report the first detection of a credible progenitor system for a Type Ic supernova (SN Ic), SN 2017ein. We present spectra and photometry of the SN, finding it to be similar to carbon-rich, low-luminosity SNe Ic. Using a post-explosion Keck adaptive optics image, we precisely determine the position of SN 2017ein in pre-explosion \hst\ images, finding a single source coincident with the SN position. This source is marginally extended, and is consistent with being a stellar cluster. However, under the assumption that the emission of this source is dominated by a single point source, we perform point-spread function photometry, and correcting for line-of-sight reddening, we find it to have $M_{F555W}=-7.5\pm 0.2$ mag and $m_{F555W}-m_{F814W}$=$-0.67\pm 0.14$ mag. This source is bluer than the main sequence and brighter than almost all Wolf-Rayet stars, however it is similar to some WC+O- and B-star binary systems. Under the assumption that the source is dominated by a single star, we find that it had an initial mass of $55\begin{array}{c}+20-15\end{array}{M}_{\odot }$. We also examined binary star models to look for systems that match the overall photometry of the pre-explosion source and found that the best-fitting model is a $80$+$48M_{\odot }$ close binary system in which the $80M_{\odot }$ star is stripped and explodes as a lower mass star. Late-time photometry after the SN has faded will be necessary to cleanly separate the progenitor star emission from the additional coincident emission.

arXiv comment13 pages, 8 figures, published in MNRAS

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