Spectral modeling of type II supernovae

I. Dilution factors

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 85741 Garching, Germany
e-mail: cvogl@mpa-garching.mpg.de
² Astrophysics Research Centre, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN UK
e-mail: s.sim@qub.ac.uk
³ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85741 Garching, Germany
⁴ Physik Department, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Str. 1, 85741 Garching, Germany

Received: 22 June 2018
Accepted: 1 November 2018

Abstract

We present substantial extensions to the Monte Carlo radiative transfer code TARDIS to perform spectral synthesis for type II supernovae. By incorporating a non-LTE ionization and excitation treatment for hydrogen, a full account of free–free and bound-free processes, a self-consistent determination of the thermal state and by improving the handling of relativistic effects, the improved code version includes the necessary physics to perform spectral synthesis for type II supernovae to high precision as required for the reliable inference of supernova properties. We demonstrate the capabilities of the extended version of TARDIS by calculating synthetic spectra for the prototypical type II supernova SN1999em and by deriving a new and independent set of dilution factors for the expanding photosphere method. We have investigated in detail the dependence of the dilution factors on photospheric properties and, for the first time, on changes in metallicity. We also compare our results with the previously published sets of dilution factors and discuss the potential sources of the discrepancies between studies.