@article{7d2be2c4770d494cac2947ae82df248e,
title = "Exclusion of a luminous red giant as a companion star to the progenitor of supernova SN 2011fe",
abstract = "Type Ia supernovae are thought to result from a thermonuclear explosion of an accreting white dwarf in a binary system, but little is known of the precise nature of the companion star and the physical properties of the progenitor system. There are two classes of models: double-degenerate (involving two white dwarfs in a close binary system) and single-degenerate models. In the latter, the primary white dwarf accretes material from a secondary companion until conditions are such that carbon ignites, at a mass of 1.38 times the mass of the Sun. The type Ia supernova SN 2011fe was recently detected in a nearby galaxy. Here we report an analysis of archival images of the location of SN 2011fe. The luminosity of the progenitor system (especially the companion star) is 10-100 times fainter than previous limits on other type Ia supernova progenitor systems, allowing us to rule out luminous red giants and almost all helium stars as the mass-donating companion to the exploding white dwarf.",
author = "Weidong Li and Bloom, {Joshua S.} and Philipp Podsiadlowski and Miller, {Adam A.} and Cenko, {S. Bradley} and Jha, {Saurabh W.} and Mark Sullivan and Howell, {D. Andrew} and Nugent, {Peter E.} and Nathaniel Butler and Ofek, {Eran O.} and Kasliwal, {Mansi M.} and Richards, {Joseph W.} and Alan Stockton and Shih, {Hsin Yi} and Lars Bildsten and Shara, {Michael M.} and Joanne Bibby and Filippenko, {Alexei V.} and Mohan Ganeshalingam and Silverman, {Jeffrey M.} and Kulkarni, {S. R.} and Law, {Nicholas M.} and Dovi Poznanski and Quimby, {Robert M.} and Curtis McCully and Brandon Patel and Kate Maguire and Shen, {Ken J.}",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank D. Maoz and S. Starrfield for comments, and the staff of the W. M. Keck Observatory, especially J. Lyke and R. Campbell, for their assistance in obtaining the NIRC adaptive optics imaging. P.P. acknowledges discussions on symbiotic binaries with J. Mikolajewska. M.M.K. acknowledges support by NASA{\textquoteright}s Hubble Fellowship and the Carnegie-Princeton Fellowship. J.S.B.{\textquoteright}s group was partially supported by NASA. J.S.B., A.V.F., L.B. and S.W.J. acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation. A.V.F.{\textquoteright}s group at UC Berkeley, and the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) and its ongoing operation, have received financial assistance from NASA, Gary and Cynthia Bengier, the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, the Sylvia and Jim Katzman Foundation, and the TABASGO Foundation. E.O.O. is supported by an Einstein Fellowship from NASA. M.M.S. and J.B. acknowledge the support of Hilary Lipsitz and the American Museum of Natural History for essential funding. M.S. acknowledges support from the Royal Society. Some of the data presented here were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA; the observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. Observations were obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Palomar Transient Factory project, a scientific collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, La Cumbres Observatory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the University of Oxford, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The National Energy Research Scientific ComputingCenter,provided staff, computationalresources, and datastorage for this project.",
year = "2011",
month = dec,
day = "15",
doi = "10.1038/nature10646",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "480",
pages = "348--350",
journal = "Nature",
issn = "0028-0836",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "7377",
}