Effects of Dust in Electron-Capture Supernovae: Difficulty in Explaining Intermediate Luminosity Red Transients
Abstract
The progenitors of intermediate-luminosity red transients (ILRTs) spanning the luminosity gap between novae and supernovae are under debate, and electron-capture supernovae (ECSNe) have been proposed as a strong candidate. ECSNe from super asymptotic giant branch (super-AGB) stars have been theoretically predicted to be much brighter than ILRTs, but attenuation by dusty winds of their super-AGB progenitors may ease this tension. Here we construct a semi-analytical framework for calculating the light curves of ECSNe with dust attenuation and re-emission, by combining recent ECSN light curve predictions with a model for dust physics. Even by varying both the wind mass-loss rate and the ECSN model parameters, we find it challenging to simultaneously fit the light curve and color evolution of ILRTs. This poses a potential challenge to the standard models of ECSNe for explaining ILRTs. For explaining ILRTs, we propose either the existence of a population of ECSNe with much lower explosion energies (∼1048-1049 erg) and dimmer plateaus, or alternative model(s) to ECSNe that realize such low explosion energies.
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BibTeX
@misc{takeichi2026effects,
title = {{Effects of Dust in Electron-Capture Supernovae: Difficulty in Explaining Intermediate Luminosity Red Transients}},
author = {Yuma Takeichi and Daichi Tsuna and Daichi Hiramatsu and Morgan MacLeod and Masato Sato},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.37574},
eprint = {2610.37574},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.37574},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Effects of Dust in Electron-Capture Supernovae: Difficulty in Explaining Intermediate Luminosity Red Transients
AU - Yuma Takeichi
AU - Daichi Tsuna
AU - Daichi Hiramatsu
AU - Morgan MacLeod
AU - Masato Sato
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.37574
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.37574
AB - The progenitors of intermediate-luminosity red transients (ILRTs) spanning the luminosity gap between novae and supernovae are under debate, and electron-capture supernovae (ECSNe) have been proposed as a strong candidate. ECSNe from super asymptotic giant branch (super-AGB) stars have been theoretically predicted to be much brighter than ILRTs, but attenuation by dusty winds of their super-AGB progenitors may ease this tension. Here we construct a semi-analytical framework for calculating the light curves of ECSNe with dust attenuation and re-emission, by combining recent ECSN light curve predictions with a model for dust physics. Even by varying both the wind mass-loss rate and the ECSN model parameters, we find it challenging to simultaneously fit the light curve and color evolution of ILRTs. This poses a potential challenge to the standard models of ECSNe for explaining ILRTs. For explaining ILRTs, we propose either the existence of a population of ECSNe with much lower explosion energies (∼10^48-10^49 erg) and dimmer plateaus, or alternative model(s) to ECSNe that realize such low explosion energies.
ER -