Red Supergiants as Supernova Progenitors

The inevitable fate of massive stars in the initial mass range of ≈8–30M⊙ in the red supergiant (RSG) phase is a core-collapse supernova (SN) explosion, although some stars may collapse directly to a black hole. We know that this is the case, since RSGs have been directly identified and characterized for a number of supernovae (SNe) in pre-explosion archival optical and infrared images. RSGs likely all have some amount of circumstellar matter (CSM), through nominal mass loss, although evidence exists that some RSGs must experience enhanced mass loss during their lifetimes. The SNe from RSGs are hydrogen-rich Type II-Plateau (II-P), and SNe II-P at the low end of the luminosity range tend to arise from low-luminosity RSGs. The typical spectral energy distribution (SED) for such RSGs can generally be fit with a cool photospheric model, whereas the more luminous RSG progenitors of more luminous SNe II-P tend to require a greater quantity of dust in their CSM to account for their SEDs. The SN II-P progenitor luminosity range is log(Lbol/L⊙)∼4.0–5.2. The fact RSGs are known up to log(Lbol/L⊙)∼5.7 leads to the so-called “RSG problem”, which may, in the end, be a result of small number of available statistics to date.