COMPARISON OF DIVERSITY OF TYPE IIB SUPERNOVAE WITH ASYMMETRY IN CASSIOPEIA A USING LIGHT ECHOES

Abstract

ABSTRACT We compare the diversity of spectral line velocities in a large sample of type IIb supernovae (SNe IIb) with the expected asphericity in the explosion, as measured from the light echoes (LEs) of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), which was a historical galactic SN IIb. We revisit the results of Rest et al., who used LEs to observe Cas A from multiple lines of sight and hence determine its asphericity, as seen in the velocity of three spectral lines (He i λ5876, Hα, and the Ca ii near-infrared (NIR) triplet). We confirm and improve on this measurement by reproducing the effect of the LEs in the spectra of several extragalactic SNe IIb found in the literature as well as mean SN IIb spectra recently created by Liu et al. and comparing these to the observed light echo spectra of Cas A, including their associated uncertainties. In order to quantify the accuracy of this comparison, we smooth the light echo spectra of Cas A using Gaussian processes and use a Monte Carlo method to measure the absorption velocities of these three features in the spectra. We then test the hypothesis that the diversity of ejecta velocities seen in SNe IIb can be explained by asphericity. We do this by comparing the range of velocities seen in the different LEs, and hence different lines of sight, of Cas A to that seen in the population of SNe IIb. We conclude that these two ranges are of the same order and thus asphericity could be enough to explain the diversity in the expansion velocity alone.