UV to visible-light observations of SN 2018fif

We employ the SOPRANOS code, an implementation of the model by Sapir & Waxman and its extension to early times by Morag et al. Compared with previous implementations, SOPRANOS has the advantage of including a careful account of the limited temporal validity domain of the shock-cooling model as well as allowing usage of the entirety of the early UV data. We find that the progenitor of SN 2018fif was a large red supergiant with a radius of R=744.0_-128.0_^+183.0^R_{sun}_ and an ejected mass of M_ej_=9.3_-5.8_^+0.4^M_{sun}_.

Our model also gives information on the explosion epoch, the progenitor's inner structure, the shock velocity, and the extinction. The distribution of radii is double- peaked, with smaller radii corresponding to lower values of the extinction, earlier recombination times, and a better match to the early UV data. If these correlations persist in future objects, denser spectroscopic monitoring constraining the time of recombination, as well as accurate UV observations (e.g., with ULTRASAT), will help break the extinction/radius degeneracy and independently determine both.