Properties of the circumstellar matter around the pair-instability supernova candidate SN 2018ibb revealed by its light curve
Abstract
SN 2018ibb is one of the best pair-instability supernova (PISN) candidates identified to date. It, however, showed unexpected blue flux excess in late-phase spectra, likely originating from the interaction between supernova (SN) ejecta and dense circumstellar matter (CSM). We develop synthetic light-curve models of PISNe interacting with dense CSM and estimate the CSM properties of SN 2018ibb by comparing the synthetic and observed light curves. We found that the bolometric luminosity evolution of SN 2018ibb from 150 d after the peak can be well reproduced by the interaction with the CSM formed by a mass-loss rate of 0.01(v_CSM/1,000 km/s) Msun/yr, where v_CSM is the CSM velocity. The observed luminosity break at around 300 d from the peak indicates that the CSM interaction ended at this time and the dense CSM radius was 8.5e16 cm. The CSM radius then implies that the mass loss of the progenitor was enhanced for 28/(v_CSM/1,000 km/s) yr before explosion. We conclude that PISN progenitors may experience short-term mass-loss enhancement within decades before explosion, similar to what is often observed in progenitors of core-collapse SNe.
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BibTeX
@misc{moriya2026properties,
title = {{Properties of the circumstellar matter around the pair-instability supernova candidate SN 2018ibb revealed by its light curve}},
author = {Takashi J. Moriya and Steve Schulze and Alexander Heger and Sergei I. Blinnikov and Marat Sh. Potashov},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.16394},
eprint = {2609.16394},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16394},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Properties of the circumstellar matter around the pair-instability supernova candidate SN 2018ibb revealed by its light curve
AU - Takashi J. Moriya
AU - Steve Schulze
AU - Alexander Heger
AU - Sergei I. Blinnikov
AU - Marat Sh. Potashov
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.16394
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16394
AB - SN 2018ibb is one of the best pair-instability supernova (PISN) candidates identified to date. It, however, showed unexpected blue flux excess in late-phase spectra, likely originating from the interaction between supernova (SN) ejecta and dense circumstellar matter (CSM). We develop synthetic light-curve models of PISNe interacting with dense CSM and estimate the CSM properties of SN 2018ibb by comparing the synthetic and observed light curves. We found that the bolometric luminosity evolution of SN 2018ibb from 150 d after the peak can be well reproduced by the interaction with the CSM formed by a mass-loss rate of 0.01(v_CSM/1,000 km/s) Msun/yr, where v_CSM is the CSM velocity. The observed luminosity break at around 300 d from the peak indicates that the CSM interaction ended at this time and the dense CSM radius was 8.5e16 cm. The CSM radius then implies that the mass loss of the progenitor was enhanced for 28/(v_CSM/1,000 km/s) yr before explosion. We conclude that PISN progenitors may experience short-term mass-loss enhancement within decades before explosion, similar to what is often observed in progenitors of core-collapse SNe.
ER -