Speaker
Abigail Polin
(Carnegie Observatories, USA)
Description
Nebular [Ca II] emission can show up in the spectra of just about every type of supernovae (SNe): SNe Type Ia, core collapse SNe and of course the elusive Ca-rich transients. But what this emission can tell us, beyond there being some (how much?) calcium in the ejecta, is not well understood. I will present the early results of ongoing work to quantify this phenomena using NLTE radiative transport methods on simple SN ejecta models. We aim to understand exactly what a [Ca II] emission line can tell us about abundances and when it can dominate a spectrum. Lastly, we relate our findings to the topic of Ca-rich transients in the attempt to answer the question that plagues us all: how rich in calcium are they really?
