2015ApJ...808L..51P

Extended material at large radii surrounding a supernova (SN) can result in a double-peaked light curve. This occurs when the material is sufficiently massive that the SN shock continues to propagate into it and sufficiently extended that it produces a bright first peak. Such material can be the leftover, low-mass envelope of a star that has been highly stripped, the mass associated with a wind, or perhaps mass surrounding the progenitor due to some type of pre-explosion activity. I summarize the conditions necessary for such a light curve to occur, describe what can be learned about the extended material from the light curve shape, and provide an analytic model for fitting the first peak in these double-peaked SNe. This is applied to the specific case of a Type Ic super-luminous SN, LSQ14bdq. The mass in the extended material around this explosion's progenitor is measured to be small, ∼ 0.3 - 0.5 M_☉. The radius of this material can be ∼ 500-5000 R_☉, but it is difficult to constrain due to a degeneracy between radius and the SN's energy. In the future, spectra taken during the first peak will be important for measuring the velocity and composition of the extended material so that this degeneracy can be overcome.