CIRCUMSTELLAR AND EXPLOSION PROPERTIES OF TYPE Ibn SUPERNOVAE

Abstract

ABSTRACT We investigate circumstellar and explosion properties of Type Ibn supernovae (SNe) by analyzing their bolometric light curves (LCs). Bolometric LCs of SNe Ibn generally have a large contrast between peak luminosity and late-phase luminosity, which is much larger than those of 56Ni-powered SNe. Thus, most of them are likely powered by the interaction between SN ejecta and dense circumstellar media. In addition, SNe Ibn decline much faster than SNe IIn, and this indicates that the interaction in SNe Ibn ceases earlier than in SNe IIn. Thus, we argue that SN Ibn progenitors experience high mass-loss rates in a short period just before explosion, while SN IIn progenitors have high mass-loss rates sustained for a long time. Furthermore, we show that rise time and peak luminosity of SNe Ibn and IIn are similar and thus, they have similar explosion properties and circumstellar density. The similar circumstellar density in the two kinds of SNe may indicate that mass-loss rates of SN Ibn progenitors are generally higher than those of Type IIn as the wind velocities inferred from narrow spectral components are generally higher in SNe Ibn. We also show that mass and explosion energy of SNe Ibn may be smaller than those of other stripped-envelope SNe, probably because they tend to suffer large fallback or some of them may not even be terminal stellar explosions.