Abstract
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. Recent research has suggested that the progenitors of Type IIP SNe have a zero-age main-sequence (ZAMS) mass not exceeding ~18 M (⊙). Our fits give a progenitor ZAMS mass of ⩽18 M (⊙) for seven of the SNe. Where previous progenitor mass estimates exist from various sources, such as hydrodynamical modeling, multiwavelength observations, or semi-analytic calculations, our modeling generally tends toward the lower-mass values. This result is in contrast to results from previous hydrodynamical modeling but consistent with those obtained using general-relativistic radiation-hydrodynamical codes. We do find that one event, SN 2015ba, has a progenitor whose mass is closer to 24 M (⊙), although we are unable to fit it well. We also derive the amount of (56)Ni required to reproduce the tail of the light curve and find values generally larger than previous estimates. Overall, we find that it is difficult to characterize the explosion by a single parameter, and that a range of parameters is needed.