A Monte Carlo approach to magnetar-powered transients: II. Broad-lined type Ic supernovae not associated with GRBs

Ling-Jun Wang, Zach Cano, Shan-Qin Wang, Weikang Zheng, Hai Yu, Liang-Duan Liu, Yan-Hui Han, Zi-Gao Dai, Dong Xu, Yu-Lei Qiu, Jian-Yan Wei

Published 2017-02-10Version 1

The explosion mechanism of broad-lined type Ic supernovae (SNe Ic-BL) is not very well understood despite their discovery more than two decades ago. Recently a serious confrontation of SNe Ic-BL with the magnetar (plus 56Ni) model was carried out following previous suggestions. Strong evidence for magnetar formation was found for the well-observed SNe Ic-BL 1998bw and 2002ap. In this paper we systematically study a large sample of SNe Ic-BL not associated with gamma-ray bursts. We use photospheric velocity data determined in a self-consistent way, which is an improvement to previous methods that suffered from large inconsistencies. We find that the magnetar+56Ni model provides a good description of the light curves and velocity evolution of our sample of SNe Ic-BL, although some SNe (not all) can also be described by the pure-magnetar model or by the pure-56Ni (two-component) model. In the magnetar model, the amount of 56Ni required to explain their luminosity is significantly reduced, and the derived initial explosion energy is, in general, in accordance with neutrino heating. Some correlations between different physical parameters are evaluated and their implications regarding magnetic field amplification and the total energy reservoir are discussed.