Progenitors of electron-capture supernovae

AbstractWe investigate the lowest mass stars that produce Type-II supernovae, motivated by recent results showing that a large fraction of type-II supernova progenitors for which there are direct detections display unexpectedly low luminosity (for a review see e.g. Smartt 2009). There are three potential evolutionary channels leading to this fate. Alongside the standard ‘massive star’ Fe-core collapse scenario we investigate the likelihood of electron capture supernovae (EC-SNe) from super-AGB (S-AGB) stars in their thermal pulse phase, from failed massive stars for which neon burning and other advanced burning stages fail to prevent the star from contracting to the critical densities required to initiate rapid electron-capture reactions and thus the star's collapse. We find it indeed possible that both of these relatively exotic evolutionary channels may be realised but it is currently unclear for what proportion of stars. Ultimately, the supernova light curves, explosion energies, remnant properties (see e.g. Knigge et al. 2011) and ejecta composition are the quantities desired to establish the role that these stars at the lower edge of the massive star mass range play.