The Explosion and Progenitor Properties of Type IIP Supernovae Inferred from MESA and STELLA Modelling

The progenitors of Type IIP supernovae (SNe) are known to be red supergiants, but their properties are not well determined. We employ hydrodynamical modeling to investigate the explosion characteristics of eight Type IIP SNe and the properties of their progenitor stars. We create evolutionary models using the MESA stellar evolution code, explode these models, and simulate the optical light curves using the STELLA code. We fit the optical light curves, Fe II 5169 Angstrom velocity, and photospheric velocity to the observational data. Recent research has suggested that the progenitors of Type IIP SNe have a zero-age main-sequence (ZAMS) mass not exceeding ∼18 solar masses. Our fits give a progenitor ZAMS mass of < 18 solar masses for seven of the SNe. Where previous progenitor mass estimates exist from various sources, such as hydrodynamical modeling, multiwavelength observations, or semi-analytic calculations, our modeling generally tends toward the lower-mass values. This result is in contrast to results from previous hydrodynamical modeling, but consistent with those obtained using general-relativistic radiation-hydrodynamical codes. We are unable to fit one event, SN 2015ba well, but our best fit indicates a progenitor mass closer to 24 solar masses. The amount of 56Ni required to reproduce the tail of the light curve is found to be generally larger than previous estimates. The explosion is difficult to characterize by a single parameter, and a range of parameters is needed. This work was supported by NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program grant NNX14AR63G.