Single or double degenerate progenitors? Searching for shock emission in the SDSS-II Type Ia supernovae

Abstract

From the set of nearly 500 spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernovae (SNe) and around 10,000 unconfirmed candidates from SDSS-II, we select a subset of 108 confirmed SNe Ia with well-observed early-time light curves to search for signatures from shock interaction of the SN with a companion star. No evidence for shock emission is seen; however, the cadence and photometric noise could hide a weak shock signal. We simulate shocked light curves using SN Ia templates and a simple Gaussian shock model to emulate the noise properties of the SDSS-II sample and estimate the detectability of the shock interaction signal as a function of shock amplitude, shock width, and shock fraction. We find no direct evidence for shock interaction in the rest-frame B-band, but place an upper limit on the shock amplitude at 9% of SN peak flux (Mb >-16.6 mag). If the single degenerate channel dominates type Ia progenitors, this result constrains the companion stars to be less than about 6 M ⊙ on the main sequence and strongly disfavors red giant companions. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.