The HST Nondetection of SN Ia 2011fe 11.5 yr after Explosion Further Restricts Single-degenerate Progenitor Systems

Abstract

We present deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the nearby Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) 2011fe obtained 11.5 yr after explosion. No emission is detected at the SN location to a 1 σ (3 σ ) limit of F555W > 30.2 (29.0) mag, or equivalently M _V > 1.2 (−0.1) mag, neglecting the distance uncertainty to M101. We constrain the presence of donor stars impacted by the SN ejecta with the strictest limits thus far on compact (i.e., $\mathrm{log}\,g\gtrsim 4$ ) companions. H-rich zero-age main-sequence companions with masses ≥2 M _⊙ are excluded, a significant improvement upon the preexplosion imaging limit of ≈5 M _⊙ . Main-sequence He stars with masses ≥1.0 M _⊙ and subgiant He stars with masses ≤0.8 M _⊙ are also disfavored by our late-time imaging. Synthesizing our limits on postimpact donors with previous constraints from preexplosion imaging, early-time radio and X-ray observations, and nebular-phase spectroscopy, essentially all formation channels for SN 2011fe invoking a nondegenerate donor star at the time of explosion are unlikely.

Keywords

• Type Ia supernovae
• Stellar mass loss
• Helium-rich stars
• Interacting binary stars