Optical color of Type Ib and Ic supernovae and implications for their progenitors

Abstract

Type Ib and Ic supernovae (SNe Ib/Ic) originate from hydrogen-deficient massive star progenitors, of which the exact properties are still much debated. Using the SN data in the literature, we investigate the optical $B-V$ color of SNe Ib/Ic at the $V-$band peak and show that SNe Ib are systematically bluer than SNe Ic. We construct SN models from helium-rich and helium-poor progenitors of various masses using the radiation hydrodynamics code STELLA and discuss how the $B-V$ color at the $V-$band peak is affected by ${}^{56}$Ni to ejecta mass ratios, ${}^{56}$Ni mixing and presence/absence of the helium envelope. We argue that the dichotomy in the amounts of helium in the progenitors plays the primary role in making the observed systematic color difference at the optical peak, in favor of the most commonly invoked SN scenario that SNe Ib and SNe Ic progenitors are helium-rich and helium-poor, respectively.

Accepted for publication in ApJ. 16 pages

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• The Demographics of Binary Companions to Stripped-Envelope Supernovae: Confronting Observations with Population Synthesis
• The fate of rotating massive stars across cosmic times
• The effects of Thomson scattering and chemical mixing on early-time light curves of double peaked type IIb supernovae
• The demographics of core-collapse supernovae. The role of binary evolution and CSM interaction
• Can circumstellar interaction explain the strange light curve features of Type Ib/c supernovae?