Speaker
Description
Massive stars can undergo substantial mass loss through several mechanisms, including nuclear flashes, pulsational pair instability (PPI), and convection waves depositing energy in the stellar envelope. Such mass-loss episodes are expected to create dense circumstellar environments that significantly affect the light curves of subsequent supernova explosions through ejecta–circumstellar material (CSM) interaction.
Type IIn supernovae (SNe) exhibit luminous light curves that can be strongly affected by this effect. This type of SNe exhibits a myriad of evolutionary profiles, with diversity in luminosity, dynamics, interactions, CSM morphology, and dust formation.
In our study, we examine SN 2019vxm, an interacting supernova that belongs to the class of long-lasting Type IIn events, whose precise model parameters remain a subject of debate to this day.
Thus, we investigate the modelling approaches used in previous studies of SN 2019vxm, comparing the models adopted to reproduce its observed light curve and the physical parameters derived from them.
Our aim is to create a completely separate modeling method, where we combine stellar evolution models generated by MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) with synthetic light curves calculated using SNEC (Supernova Explosion Code).
Since SNEC only considers radioactive Ni decay and does not include luminosity generated by ejecta–CSM interaction, we propose to investigate the CSM contribution separately.