Speaker
Description
Supernova (SN) explosions are important for galaxy evolution because they enrich the interstellar medium with heavy elements and provide feedback which can halt further star formation. These effects depend on what stellar progenitors explode as a given SN type. Type Ic SNe (without hydrogen or helium lines in their spectra) can either be a binary system of ~10 solar mass stars or a very massive (>30 Msun) star. These models involve very different lifetimes of the SN progenitors, so predict very different states of molecular gas around the explosion. Exploiting this, I will show that millimetre carbon monoxide observations of nearby galaxies hosting SNe provide evidence for the binary model of type Ic SNe. This is an important distinction from the point of view of stellar evolution as well as galaxy's future star formation.
