The Explosion and Progenitor Properties of Type IIP Supernovae Inferred from MESA and STELLA Modelling

The progenitors of Type IIP supernovae (SNe) are known to be red supergiants, but their properties are not well determined. We employ hydrodynamical modeling to investigate the explosion characteristics of eight Type IIP SNe and the properties of their progenitor stars. We create evolutionary models using the MESA stellar evolution code, explode these models, and simulate the optical light curves using the STELLA code. We fit the optical light curves, Fe II 5169 Å velocity, and photospheric velocity to the observational data. Our fits give a progenitor ZAMS mass of <19 M_☉ for seven of the SNe. Where previous progenitor mass estimates exist from various sources, such as hydrodynamical modeling, multiwavelength observations, or semianalytic calculations, our modeling generally tends toward the lower-mass values. We are unable to fit one event, SN 2015ba well, but our best fit indicates a progenitor mass closer to 24 M_☉.