Supernovae in the nuclear regions of starburst galaxies

Details Supernovae in the nuclear regions of starburst galaxies Supernovae in the nuclear regions of starburst galaxies

2000-11-22

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0011417v1

Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 327 (2001) 350

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

19 pages, 7 figures; accepted in MNRAS

Scientific paper

10.1046/j.1365-8711.2001.04867.x

The feasibility of using near-infrared observations to discover supernovae in the nuclear and circumnuclear regions of nearby starburst galaxies is investigated. We provide updated estimates of the intrinsic core-collapse supernova rates in these regions. We discuss the problem of extinction, and present new estimates of the extinction towards 33 supernova remnants in the starburst galaxy M 82. This is done using H I and H_2 column density measurements. We estimate the molecular to atomic hydrogen mass ratio to be 7.4 +- 1.0 in M 82. We have assembled near-infrared photometric data for a total of 13 core-collapse supernovae, some unpublished hitherto. This constitutes the largest database of IR light curves for such events. We show that the IR light curves fall into two classes, ``ordinary'' and ``slow-declining''. Template JHKL light curves are derived for both classes. For ordinary core-collapse supernovae, the average peak JHKL absolute magnitudes are -18.4, -18.6, -18.6, and -19.0 respectively. The slow-declining core-collapse SNe are found to be significantly more luminous than the ordinary events, even at early times, having average peak JHKL absolute magnitudes of -19.9, -20.0, -20.0, and -20.4 respectively. We investigate the efficiency of a computerised image subtraction method in supernova detection. We then carry out a Monte Carlo simulation of a supernova search using K-band images of NGC 5962. The effects of extinction and observing strategy are discussed. We conclude that a modest observational programme will be able to discover a number of nuclear supernovae.

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