AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002
Session 84. Supernovae Surveys
Display, Wednesday, January 9, 2002, 9:20am-6:30pm, Monroe/Lincoln

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[84.09] Interpreting Supernova Polarization Spectra

D.N. Kasen, P.E. Nugent, L. Wang, D.A. Howell (Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

High quality spectropolarimetric observations of supernova are becoming increasing available and provide a powerful way of exploring the asphericity of such events. Here we present some theoretical studies aimed at increasing our understanding of how features appearing in a polarization spectrum give insight into the supernova geometry. We focus our attention on a single spectral line, and explore how various 3-dimensional distributions of line optical depth and electron Thompson opacity produce different polarization line profiles. In particular we calculate the polarization due to clumpy and jet-like geometries.


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