7 papers
Luminous Red Novae as shock-powered transients I: Electron-scattering wings and deviations from Case B
Albert Sneppen, Kenta Hotokezaka, Christopher M. Irwin
Luminous red novae (LRNe) are a class of optical transients resulting from the mergers of binary stars or common envelope events. The population displays heterogeneous light curves…
EP260321a/SN 2026gzf: The Faintest Shock Breakout Associated with a Broad-Lined Supernova
Brendan O'Connor, Xander J. Hall, Malte Busmann +33
The explosion of a star is first marked by the shock wave breaking out of the stellar surface, producing a burst of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. These events are observationall…
AT2018cow Powered by a Shock in Aspherical Circumstellar Media
Taya Govreen-Segal, Ehud Nakar, Kenta Hotokezaka +2
We present a quantitative model for the luminous fast blue optical transient AT2018cow in which a shock propagating through an aspherical circumstellar medium (CSM) produces the X-…
Black Hole Envelopes in Little Red Dots
Daisaburo Kido, Kunihito Ioka, Kenta Hotokezaka +2
Recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered a population of compact, red object () known as little red dots (LRDs). The presence of broa…
Revisiting GRB 060218: new insights into low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts from a revised shock breakout model
Christopher M. Irwin, Kenta Hotokezaka
Despite two decades since the discovery of low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts, their origin remains poorly understood. In events such as GRB 060218, shock breakout from a progenitor w…
Demystifying shock breakout spectra
Christopher M. Irwin, Kenta Hotokezaka
The spectrum of the first supernova light (i.e., the shock breakout and early cooling emission) is an important diagnostic for the state of the progenitor star just before explosio…