Direct Detection of Type II-P Supernova Progenitors with the Euclid and CSST Surveys

Abstract

A central goal in supernova (SN) research is to identify and characterize their progenitors. However, this is very difficult due to the limited archival images with sufficient depth and spatial resolution required for direct progenitor detection and due to the circumstellar dust which often biases the estimate of their intrinsic parameters. This field will be revolutionized by Euclid and the upcoming Chinese Space Station Survey Telescope (CSST), which conduct deep, wide-field, high-resolution and multi-band imaging surveys. We analyze their detection capability by comparing the model magnitudes of red supergiant (RSG) progenitors with the detection limits under different conditions, and we estimate the annual detection rates with Monte-Carlo simulations. We explore how to recover the intrinsic properties of SN progenitors with the help of radiation transfer calculations in circumstellar dust. We find the optical and near-infrared filters of the Euclid and CSST are highly effective for detecting RSG progenitors. We predict that archival images from the completed 2 surveys will enable $\lesssim13$ (or 24) progenitor detections per year within the mass range of 8--16 (or 8--25)M_\odot, an order of magnitude higher than the current detection rate of $\sim1$ detection per year. In the presence of circumstellar dust, the emerging spectral energy distribution (SED) of the progenitor is mainly affected by the optical depth and is almost independent of dust temperature in the Euclid and CSST filters. Our mock tests demonstrate that one can derive the progenitor mass and dust optical depth simultaneously by fitting the observed SED over the 11 filters of the 2 surveys while fixing the dust temperature to a typical value. Euclid and CSST will significantly enlarge the sample of direct progenitor detections with accurate mass measurements, which is crucial to resolve the long-standing RSG problem.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: Local galaxies within the Euclid and CSST survey footprints, shown in barycentric mean ecliptic coordinates. Galaxies within the Euclid+CSST area are marked in black, those within the Euclid-only area in blue, and those within the CSST-only area in red.
• Figure 2: Sensitivity curves for the filters of the Euclid and CSST surveys, along with synthetic SEDs for an RSG with initial mass $M_\mathrm{ini}=15\,M_{\odot}$, surrounded by varying degrees of O-rich dust, distributed in a spherical envelope. Colored shaded regions display the total sensitivity of photometric bands in the Euclid and CSST surveys. Solid lines represent the dust with an inner temperature $T_{\mathrm{in}}=200\,\mathrm{K}$ and dashed lines show the $T_{\mathrm{in}}=1200\,\mathrm{K}$ condition. Black, blue, green and red lines with optical depth ($\tau_\mathrm{V}$) annotations correspond to the total emerging radiation, scattered radiation, attenuated radiation and the dust emission, respectively. Dust emission for $T_{\mathrm{in}}=200\,$K is much lower than the extent of the y-axis. The flux densities shown are obtained assuming the RSG is located at a distance of $d=10\,{\rm Mpc}$.
• Figure 3: The evolutionary tracks of massive stars in comparison to the Euclid/CSST detection limits. Black solid lines show the evolutionary tracks of massive stars with initial masses of 8, 12, 16, 24, and 30 $M_\odot$ obtained from the parsec stellar evolution models. Colored solid curves indicate the typical detection limits for the Euclid and CSST surveys.
• Figure 4: Mass range of SN progenitors detectable by Euclid and CSST surveys. This figure is divided into nine panels. Three columns represent $A_{\mathrm{V}}=0$ with no host-galaxy background, $A_{\mathrm{V}}=1$ with no host-galaxy background, and $A_{\mathrm{V}}=0$ with a $R$-band background surface brightness of $20\,\mathrm{AB}\,\mathrm{mag\,arcsec^{-2}}$. Three rows correspond to distances of 10, 30, and 50 Mpc, respectively. Each panel illustrates the detectable mass range of SN progenitors under the specified extinction and host-galaxy background conditions.
• Figure 5: Expected maximum initial masses $M_\mathrm{ini}^\mathrm{max}$ in SN II-P progenitor samples of varying sizes, derived with different assumed upper limits on the initial masses $M_\mathrm{ini}^\mathrm{limit}$ of RSGs. The pink, yellow, green, and blue shaded regions represent the uncertainty ranges for samples with $M_\mathrm{ini}^\mathrm{limit}=16,\,20,\,25$ and $30\,M_{\odot}$, respectively. Within each colored region, dashed lines indicate the median values for each sample group, and the shading intensity varies from dark to light to represent different confidence intervals (CIs): dark, medium, and light shadings reflect the 68%, 95%, and 99.7% CIs, respectively, corresponding to $\pm 1\sigma$/$\pm 2\sigma$/$\pm 3\sigma$ deviations from the median.