A bias-corrected luminosity function for red supergiant supernova progenitor stars
The Astrophysical Journal Letters(2023)
摘要
The apparent tension between the luminosity functions of red supergiant (RSG)
stars and of RSG progenitors of Type II supernovae (SNe) is often referred to
as the RSG problem and it motivated some to suggest that many RSGs end their
life without a SN explosion. However, the luminosity functions of RSG SN
progenitors presented so far were biased to high luminosities, because the
sensitivity of the search was not considered. Here, we use limiting magnitudes
to calculate a bias-corrected RSG progenitor luminosity function. We find that
only (36±11)% of all RSG progenitors are brighter than a bolometric
magnitude of -7 mag, a significantly smaller fraction than
(56±5)% quoted by Davies Beasor (2020). The larger uncertainty is due to
the relatively small progenitor sample, while uncertainties on measured
quantities such as magnitudes, bolometric corrections, extinction, or SN
distances, only have a minor impact, as long as they fluctuate randomly for
different objects in the sample. The bias-corrected luminosity functions of RSG
SN progenitors and Type M supergiants in the Large Magellanic cloud are
consistent with each other, as also found by Davies Beasor (2020) for the
uncorrected luminosity function. The RSG progenitor luminosity function, hence,
does not imply the existence of failed SNe.
The presented statistical method is not limited to progenitor searches, but
applies to any situation in which a measurement is done for a sample of
detected objects, but the probed quantity or property can only be determined
for part of the sample.
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关键词
Core-collapse supernovae,Type II supernovae,Massive stars,Red supergiant stars,Astrostatistics,Astrostatistics distributions
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