The supernova remnant (SNR) Puppis A (aka G260.4-3.4) is a middle-aged supernova remnant, which displays increasing X-ray surface brightness from West to East corresponding to an increasing density of the ambient interstellar medium at the Eastern and Northern shell. The dense IR photon field and the high ambient density around the remnant make it an ideal case to study in γ-rays. Gamma-ray studies based on three years of observations with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard Fermi have revealed the high energy gamma-ray emission from SNR Puppis A. The γ-ray emission from the remnant is spatially extended, and nicely matches the radio and X-ray morphologies. Its γ-ray spectrum is well described by a simple power law with an index of ~2.1, and it is among the faintest supernova remnants yet detected at GeV energies. To constrain the relativistic electron population, seven years of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data were also analyzed, and enabled to extend the radio spectrum up to 93 GHz. The results obtained in the radio and γ-ray domains are described in detail, as well as the possible origins of the high energy γ-ray emission (Bremsstrahlung, Inverse Compton scattering by electrons or decay of neutral pions produced by proton interactions).

We model the fluxes in the infrared and submillimeter domain using the dust chemical composition and mass derived from the physico-chemical model of a Type II-P supernova ejecta with stellar progenitor of 19 M⊙. Our results highlight that the dust mass predicted to rise over time in our chemical models from 10−2 to 10−1M⊙ satisfactorily reproduce the infrared and sub millimeter fluxes. They confirm that type II-P SNe are efficient but moderate dust makers in galaxies.

A local sub-population of type Ib/c supernovae (stripped envelope SNe) with mildly relativistic outflows have been detected as sub-energetic Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) or X-ray Flashes (XRFs) and as radio afterglows without detected GRB counterpart. SN 2009bb belongs to the last class of objects. The long term radio observations with (J)VLA and GMRT of this SN map the dynamics of the relativistic ejecta characteristic of Central Engines associated with GRBs. We present here GMRT observations of this SN from October 2009 onwards.

SNR 1987A is the expanding remnant from the brightest supernova since the invention of the telescope. The remnant has been monitored extensively in the radio at variety of wavelengths and provides a wealth of data on which to base a simulation. Questions to be answered include estimating the efficiency of particle acceleration at shock fronts, determining the cause of the one-sided radio morphology for SNR 1987A and investigating the gas properties of the pre-supernova environment. We attempt to address these questions using a fully three-dimensional model of SNR 1987A.

Core-collapse supernovae can produce X-rays through a variety of mechanisms, which are briefly reviewed. Through a combination of targeted searches of specific supernovae and archival searches for serendipitous coverage of supernovae, the number of known X-ray supernovae has grown by a factor of five in the past 13 years, when the Chandra X-ray Observatory and XMM-Newton were launched. The Swift satellite has contributed greatly to the discovery of X-ray emitted supernovae, but care must taken with all Swift detections given its spatial resolution and the number of X-ray binaries typically seen in external galaxies. About half of the reported Swift detections of X-ray emission from supernovae are in fact not due to the supernovae but from unrelated nearby sources in the host galaxies.

Here we review how binary interactions affect the final pre-supernova structure of massive stars and the resulting supernova explosions. (1) Binary-induced mass loss and mass accretion determine the final envelope structure, the mass, radius and chemical composition, which are mainly responsible for the supernova appearance and supernova (sub-)type. (2) Mass loss can also drastically change the core evolution and hence the final fate of a star; specifically, around 10 M⊙, it determines whether a star explodes in a supernova or forms a white dwarf, while for larger masses it can dramatically increase the minimum main-sequence mass above which a star is expected to collapse to a black hole. (3) Mass loss before the supernova directly affects the circumstellar medium (CSM) which can affect the supernova spectrum (e.g. account for the IIn phenomenon), produce powerful radio emission and, in extreme cases, lead to a strong interaction with the supernova ejecta and thus strongly modify the lightcurve shape; it may even be responsible for some of the superluminous supernovae that have recently been discovered.

We present an analysis of V-band light-curves morphologies of type II supernovae (SNII). This investigation is achieved through photometry of more than 100 SNe including a first analysis of SNII data obtained by the Carnegie Supernova Project (CSP). We define the important observables and present correlations between SNe absolute magnitudes and light-curve decline rates: we find that brighter SNII tend to have faster declining light-curves at all epochs.

Supernovae of Type IIn (narrow line) appear to be explosions that had strong mass loss before the event, so that the optical luminosity is powered by the circumstellar interaction. If the mass loss region has an optical depth >c/vs, where vs is the shock velocity, the shock breakout occurs in the mass loss region and a significant fraction of the explosion energy can be radiated. The emission from the superluminous SN 2006gy and the normal luminosity SN 2011ht can plausibly be attributed to shock breakout in a wind, with SN 2011ht being a low energy event. Superluminous supernovae of Type I may derive their luminosity from interaction with a mass loss region of limited extent. However, the distinctive temperature increase to maximum luminosity has not been clearly observed in Type I events. Suggested mechanisms for the strong mass loss include pulsational pair instability, gravity-waves generated by instabilities in late burning phases, and binary effects.

Dust plays an important role in our understanding of the near and distant Universe. The enormous amounts (≳108M⊙) of dust observed at high redshifts have forced us to revisit the commonly-invoked sites of dust production. Although core-collapse supernovae are the prime candidates for cosmic dust production, their actual contribution to the dust budget has been the subject of much debate in recent years. Here, I will discuss results from several vigorous observational campaigns aimed at quantifying the amount of dust produced by core-collapse supernovae. Although sample sizes are still modest, I will attempt to put the role of supernovae as dust producers into perspective.

Very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations during the last 30 years have resolved many supernovae and provided detailed measurements of the expansion velocity and deceleration. Such measurements are useful for estimating the radial density profiles of both the ejecta and the circumstellar medium left over from the progenitor. VLBI measurements are also the most direct way of confirming the relativistic expansion velocities thought to occur in supernovae associated with gamma-ray bursts. Well-resolved images of a few supernovae have been obtained, and the interaction of the ejecta as it expands into the circumstellar medium could be monitored in detail. We discuss recent results, for SN 1979C, SN 1986J, and SN 1993J, and note that updated movies of the latter two of the supernovae from soon after the explosion to the present are available from the first author's personal website.

We study several TeV Supernova Remnants (SNRs W51C, CTB 37A, CTB 37B and G353.6-0.7) by radio and X-ray observations. We utilize neutral hydrogen (\HI) 21 cm line data to measure their kinematic distances, and use the CO line survey sensitive to molecular hydrogen clouds to validate these distance measurements and understand their relation to the TeV SNRs. Our study show that the TeV γ-ray emission from W51C should not be associated with the high-velocity HI clouds; CTB 37A and CTB 37B are at different distances and are only by chance nearby each other on the sky; the extended TeV emission from G353.6-0.7 possibly originates from the interaction between the SNR shock and the adjacent CO clouds.

We extracted the neutral hydrogen absorption spectra of supernova remnants W44 (G34.7-0.4) and 3C 391 (G31.9+0.0) from the VLA Galactic Plane Survey data. The revised distance of W41 is about 3.3 kpc replacing the previous 3.0 kpc. Further, we confined the distance of G31.9+0.0 to about 7.2 kpc due to its interaction with its surrounding molecular clouds.

Supernova 2012A was discovered on 7.39UT, January, 2012 in the nearby galaxy NGC 3239 at an unfiltered magnitude of 14.6 and classified spectroscopically as a Type IIP event. Here, we present the optical photometric and spectroscopic follow-up of the event during 14d to 130d post explosion.

In the past few years, gamma-ray astronomy has entered a golden age. At TeV energies, only a handful of sources were known a decade ago, but the current generation of ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes has increased this number to more than one hundred. At GeV energies, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has increased the number of known sources by nearly an order of magnitude in its first 2 years of operation. The recent detection and unprecedented morphological studies of gamma-ray emission from shell-type supernova remnants is of great interest, as these analyses are directly linked to the long standing issue of the origin of the cosmic-rays. However, these detections still do not constitute a conclusive proof that supernova remnants accelerate the bulk of Galactic cosmic-rays, mainly due to the difficulty of disentangling the hadronic and leptonic contributions to the observed gamma-ray emission. In the following, I will review the most relevant results of gamma ray astronomy concerning supernova remnants (shell-type and middle-age interacting with molecular clouds).

We present integral-field spectroscopic observations with the VIMOS-IFU at the VLT of fast (2000-3000 kms−1) Balmer-dominated shocks surrounding the northwestern rim of the remnant of supernova 1006. The high spatial and spectral resolution of the instrument enable us to show that the physical characteristics of the shocks exhibit a strong spatial variation over few atomic scale lengths across 133 sky locations. Our results point to the presence of a population of non-thermal protons (10-100 keV) which might well be the seed particles for generating high-energy cosmic rays. We also present observations of Tycho's supernova remnant taken with the narrow-band tunable filter imager OSIRIS at the GTC and the Fabry-Perot interferometer GHaFaS at the WHT to resolve respectively the broad and narrow Hα lines across a large part of the remnant.

We present a study of the early UV/Optical emission of the stripped-envelope supernovae based on a one-dimensional, Lagrangian model that solves the hydrodynamics and radiation transport in an expanding ejecta. The models are compared with observations to constrain the physical properties of the progenitor star, such as radius and mixing of radioactive nickel synthesized during the explosion. In particular, we present models for the early emission of the type IIb SN 2011dh and the Type Ib SN 2008D.

We investigate the role played by initial clumping of ejecta and by efficient acceleration of cosmic rays (CRs) in determining the density structure of the post-shock region of a Type Ia supernova remnant (SNR) through detailed 3D MHD modeling. Our model describes the expansion of a SNR through a magnetized interstellar medium (ISM), including the initial clumping of ejecta and the effects on shock dynamics due to back-reaction of accelerated CRs. The model predictions are compared to the observations of SN 1006. We found that the back-reaction of accelerated CRs alone cannot reproduce the observed separation between the forward shock (FS) and the contact discontinuity (CD) unless the energy losses through CR acceleration and escape are very large and independent of the obliquity angle. On the contrary, the clumping of ejecta can naturally reproduce the observed small separation and the occurrence of protrusions observed in SN 1006, even without the need of accelerated CRs. We conclude that FS-CD separation is a probe of the ejecta structure at the time of explosion rather than a probe of the efficiency of CR acceleration in young SNRs.

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are strong thermal emitters of infrared radiation. The most prominent lines in the near-infrared spectra of SNRs are [Fe II] lines. The [Fe II] lines are from shocked dense atomic gases, so they trace SNRs in dense environments. After briefly reviewing the physics of the [Fe II] emission in SNR shocks, I describe the observational results which show that there are two groups of SNRs bright in [Fe II] emission: middle-aged SNRs interacting with molecular clouds and young core-collapse SNRs in dense circumstellar medium. The SNRs belonging to the former group are also bright in near-infrared H2 emission, indicating that both atomic and molecular shocks are pervasive in these SNRs. The SNRs belonging to the latter group have relatively small radii in general, implying that most of them are likely the remnants of SN IIL/b or SN IIn that had strong mass loss before the explosion. I also comment on the “[Fe II]-H2 reversal” in SNRs and on using the [Fe II]-line luminosity as an indicator of the supernova (SN) rate in galaxies. In the mid- and far-infrared regimes, thermal dust emission is dominant. The dust in SNRs can be heated either by collisions with gas species in a hot plasma or by radiation from a shock front. I discuss the characteristics of the infrared morphology of the SNRs interacting with molecular clouds and their dust heating processes. Finally, I give a brief summary of the detection of SN dust and crystalline silicate dust in SNRs.

The study of the gamma–ray radiation produced by cosmic rays that escape their accelerators is of paramount importance for (at least) two reasons: first, the detection of those gamma–ray photons can serve to identify the sources of cosmic rays and, second, the characteristics of that radiation give us constraints on the way in which cosmic rays propagate in the interstellar medium. This paper reviews the present status of the field.