The influence of line opacity treatment in stella on supernova light curves

Abstract

ABSTRACT We systematically explore the effect of the treatment of line opacity on supernova light curves. We find that it is important to consider line opacity for both scattering and absorption (i.e. thermalization, which mimics the effect of fluorescence). We explore the impact of the degree of thermalization on three major types of supernovae: Type Ia, Type II-peculiar, and Type II-plateau. For this we use the radiative transfer code stella and analyse broad-band light curves in the context of simulations done with the spectral synthesis code artis and in the context of a few examples of observed supernovae of each type. We found that the plausible range for the ratio between absorption and scattering in the radiation hydrodynamics code stella is (0.8–1):(0.2–0), i.e. the recommended thermalization parameter is 0.9.