Question regarding supernovae shock breakout

[Physics Dad]

Hi,

I am currently studying for a masters in Astrophysics and am in my Stellar Atmospheres module.

One of the questions I have been asked is with regards to the shock breakout of supernovae.

Basically, the question is which type of stars show the strongest shock breakout and why?

My thinking on this is that it is Red Super-giants as effectively the kinetic energy is a function of stellar mass the thermal energy is a function of temperature and stellar radius.

I have seen some papers showing energy levels in the range of 20 x 10⁵¹ erg, peak temperature around 5 x 10⁵ K and peak luminosity around 200 x 10⁴⁴ erg/s for a 25M_Θ RSG, and these values seem to drop off either side of this mass.

The simple fact though is that I don't full understand why.

Could anyone help shed some light on this?

Thank you!

 

[anorlunda]

Basically, the question is which type of stars show the strongest shock breakout and why?

Isn't it a question of mass and metalicity?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova has a table: Core collapse scenarios by mass and metallicity