Long-rising Type II supernovae resembling supernova 1987A – II. A new analytical model to describe these events

With the aim of improving our knowledge on supernova (SN) 1987A-like objects and, more in general, on H-rich SNe, we have developed a new analytic model to describe their post-explosive evolution. The distinctive features of this model are the possibility to evaluate the emitted luminosity and the SN expansion velocity, taking into account the recombination of the ejected material, the heating effects due to the 56Ni decay in the computation of the recombination front position, and the presence of an outer thin shell not-homologously expanding. In this paper, we present the model and a comparison with observations of SN 1987A, showing that its bolometric light curve and expansion velocity are accurately reproduced by the model. We also investigate the modelling degeneration problem in H-rich SNe and the possibility to ‘standardize’ the subgroup of SN 1987A-like objects. Moreover, we present new Ni-dependent relationships, based on our model, which link some features of the bolometric light curve of 1987A-like SNe (namely, the peak luminosity and its width) with the main physical properties of their progenitor at the explosion (i.e. the ejected mass, the explosion energy, the progenitor radius at the explosion, and the amount of 56Ni present in the ejecta), showing that such relations are in excellent agreement with observations of real SNe. From our model, we also deduce new scaling relations which may be used for estimating the main SN progenitor’s physical properties at the explosion, once only the photometric behaviour of the SN 1987A-like object is known.