Luminous Late-time Radio Emission from Supernovae Detected by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS)

Abstract

We present a population of 19 radio-luminous supernovae (SNe) with emission reaching $L_{\nu }\sim 10^{26}-10^{29}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\mathrm{H}{\mathrm{z}}^{-1}$ in the first epoch of the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS) at $2-4$GHz. Our sample includes one long Gamma-Ray Burst, SN 2017iuk/GRB171205A, and 18 core-collapse SNe detected at $\approx (1-60)$years after explosion. No thermonuclear explosion shows evidence for bright radio emission, and hydrogen-poor progenitors dominate the sub-sample of core-collapse events with spectroscopic classification at the time of explosion (79\%). We interpret these findings into the context of the expected radio emission from the forward shock interaction with the circumstellar medium (CSM). We conclude that these observations require a departure from the single wind-like density profile (i.e., ${\rho }_{\mathrm{CSM}}\propto r^{-2}$) that is expected around massive stars and/or a departure from a spherical Newtonian shock. Viable alternatives include the shock interaction with a detached, dense shell of CSM formed by a large effective progenitor mass-loss rate $\dot{M}\sim (10^{-4}-10^{-1})$ M${}_{\odot }$ yr${}^{-1}$ (for an assumed wind velocity of $1000\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$); emission from an off-axis relativistic jet entering our line of sight; or the emergence of emission from a newly-born pulsar-wind nebula. The relativistic SN 2012ap that is detected 5.7 and 8.5 years after explosion with $L_{\nu }\sim 10^{28}$ erg s${}^{-1}$ Hz${}^{-1}$ might constitute the first detections of an off-axis jet+cocoon system in a massive star. However, none of the VLASS-SNe with archival data points are consistent with our model off-axis jet light curves. Future multi-wavelength observations will distinguish among these scenarios.Our VLASS source catalogs, which were used to perform the VLASS cross matching, are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4895112.

Published on December 21, 2021 Comments are welcome 17 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

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