We calculate multicolour light curves (LCs) of supernovae (SNe) from red supergiants (RSGs) that have exploded within a dense circumstellar medium (C

We investigate the early-time light curves of a large sample of 223 Type II supernovae (SNe II) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Supernova Legacy Survey. Having a cadence of a few days and sufficient non-detections prior to explosion, we constrain rise-times, i.e. the durations from estimated first to maximum light, as a function of effective wavelength. At rest-frame g^′ band (λ_eff = 4722 Å), we find a distribution of fast rise-times with median of (7.5 ± 0.3) d. Comparing these durations with analytical shock models of Rabinak & Waxman and Nakar & Sari, and hydrodynamical models of Tominaga et al., which are mostly sensitive to progenitor radius at these epochs, we find a median characteristic radius of less than 400 solar radii. The inferred radii are on average much smaller than the radii obtained for observed red supergiants (RSG). Investigating the post-maximum slopes as a function of effective wavelength in the light of theoretical models, we find that massive hydrogen envelopes are still needed to explain the plateaus of SNe II. We therefore argue that the SN II rise-times we observe are either (a) the shock cooling resulting from the core collapse of RSG with small and dense envelopes, or (b) the delayed and prolonged shock breakout of the collapse of an RSG with an extended atmosphere or embedded within pre-SN circumstellar material.

We present rapidly rising transients discovered by a high-cadence transient survey with the Subaru telescope and Hyper Suprime-Cam. We discovered five transients at z = 0.384–0.821, showing a rate of rise faster than 1 mag per day in the restframe near-ultraviolet wavelengths. The fast rate of rise and brightness are most similar to SN 2010aq and PS1-13arp, for which ultraviolet emission was detected within a few days after the shock breakout. The lower limit of the event rate of rapidly rising transients is ∼9% of core-collapse supernova rates, assuming the duration of rapid rise to be 1 day. We show that the light curves of the three faint objects agree with the cooling envelope emission from the explosion of red supergiants. The other two luminous objects, however, are brighter and faster than the cooling envelope emission. We interpret these two objects to be the shock breakout from a dense wind with a mass loss rate of ∼10⁻³ yr⁻¹, as also proposed for PS1-13arp. This mass loss rate is higher than that typically observed for red supergiants. The event rate of these luminous objects is ≳1% of the core-collapse supernova rate, and thus our study implies that more than ∼1% of massive stars can experience intense mass loss a few years before the explosion.

Based on observations of SN 1999em, we determined the physical parameters of this supernova using hydrodynamic calculations including nonequilibrium radiative transfer. Taking the distance to SN...