Diversity in Hydrogen-rich Envelope Mass of Type II Supernovae. I. Plateau Phase Light-curve Modeling

We present a systematic study of Type II supernovae (SNe II) originating from progenitors with effective temperatures ( T eff ) and luminosities closely resembling red supergiants (RSGs) observed in pre-supernova (SN) images and in the Galaxy. Using Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics, we compute a large grid of massive stars with T eff ranging from 3200 to 3800 K at their RSG phases, with hydrogen envelopes artificially stripped to varying extents (3–10 M ⊙ ). The light curves of SNe IIP resulting from the explosions of these Galactic-RSG–like progenitors are modeled using STELLA . Our survey of the light curves reveals that partial stripping of the hydrogen envelope creates diversity in the magnitude and duration of SNe IIP light curves, without affecting the position of the RSG progenitor on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. For these Galactic-RSG-like progenitor models, we establish an indicator based on the light-curve properties to estimate the hydrogen envelope mass. Additionally, we discuss the effects of material mixing and 56 Ni heating. Applying our model grid to a large sample of approximately 100 observed SNe IIP reveals a considerably broader range of hydrogen-rich envelope masses than predicted by standard stellar wind models. This finding suggests that if SNe IIP are explosions of Galactic-like RSGs to explain the diversity in the observed light curves, a significant fraction of them must have experienced substantial mass loss beyond the standard mass-loss prescription prior to their explosions. This finding highlights the uncertainties involved in massive star evolution and the pre-SN mass-loss mechanism.