Abstract:
We present non-local thermodynamic equilibrium time-dependent radiative transfer simulations of pair-instability supernovae (PISNe) stemming from red-supergiant (RSG), blue-supergiant and Wolf-Rayet star rotation-free progenitors born in the mass range 160-230Msun, at 0.0001Zsun. Although subject to uncertainties in convection and stellar mass-loss rates, our initial conditions come from physically-consistent models that treat evolution from the main sequence, the onset of the pair-production instability, and the explosion phase. With our set of input models characterized by large 56Ni and ejecta masses, and large kinetic energies, we recover qualitatively the Type II-Plateau, II-peculiar and Ib/c light-curve morphologies, although they have larger peak bolometric luminosities (about 1e9 to 1e10Lsun) and a longer duration (about 200 d). We discuss the spectral properties for each model during the photospheric and nebular phases, including Balmer lines in II-P and II-pec at early times, the dominance of lines from intermediate-mass elements near the bolometric maximum, and the strengthening of metal line blanketing thereafter. Having similar He-core properties, all models exhibit similar post-peak spectra that are strongly blanketed by Fe ii and Fe i lines, characterized by red colours, and that arise from photospheres/ejecta with a temperature of <4000 K. Combined with the modest linewidths after the bolometric peak, these properties contrast with those of known superluminous SNe, suggesting that PISNe are yet to be discovered. Being reddish, PISNe will be difficult to observe at high redshift except when they stem from RSG explosions, in which case they could be used as metallicity probes and distance indicators.

The full paper is available here

To access the spectra for some of these models, click on the following links (each zipped tar file contains the multi-epoch spectra and a list relating model index to the time since explosion):

he100.tgz
m190z1m4.tgz
m190z1m4_unt.tgz