Determining the main-sequence mass of Type II supernova progenitors

We present radiation–hydrodynamic simulations of core-collapse supernova (SN) explosions, artificially generated by driving a piston at the base of the envelope of a rotating or non-rotating red-supergiant progenitor star. We search for trends in ejecta kinematics in the resulting Type II-Plateau (II-P) SN, exploring dependencies with explosion energy and pre-SN stellar-evolution model. We recover the trivial result that larger explosion energies yield larger ejecta velocities in a given progenitor. However, we emphasize that for a given explosion energy, the increasing helium-core mass with main-sequence mass of such Type II-P SN progenitors leads to ejection of core-embedded oxygen-rich material at larger velocities. We find that the photospheric velocity at 15 d after shock breakout is a good and simple indicator of the explosion energy in our selected set of pre-SN models. This measurement, combined with the width of the nebular-phase O I 6303–6363 Å line, can be used to place an upper-limit on the progenitor main-sequence mass. Using the results from our simulations, we find that the current, but remarkably scant, late-time spectra of Type II-P SNe support progenitor main-sequence masses inferior to ∼20 M, and thus corroborate the inferences based on the direct, but difficult, progenitor identification in pre-explosion images. The narrow width of O I 6303–6363 Å in Type II-P SNe with nebular spectra does not support high-mass progenitors in the range 25–30 M. Combined with quantitative spectroscopic modelling, such diagnostics offer a means to constrain the main-sequence mass of the progenitor, the mass fraction of the core ejected and, thus, the mass of the compact remnant formed