SN 2013ab : A normal type IIP supernova in NGC 5669

We present densely-sampled ultraviolet/optical photometric and low-resolution optical spectroscopic observations of the type IIP supernova 2013ab in the nearby (�24 Mpc) galaxy NGC 5669, from 2 to 190d after explosion. Continuous photometric observations, with the cadence of typically a day to one week, were acquired with the 1-2m class telescopes in the LCOGT network, ARIES telescopes in India and various other telescopes around the globe. The light curve and spectra suggest that the SN is a normal type IIP event with a plateau duration of � 80 days with mid plateau absolute visual magnitude of -16.7, although with a steeper decline during the plateau (0.92 mag 100 d −1 in V band) relative to other archetypal SNe of similar brightness. The velocity profile of SN 2013ab shows striking resemblance with those of SNe 1999em and 2012aw. Following the Rabinak & Waxman (2011) prescription, the initial temperature evolution of the SN emission allows us to estimate the progenitor radius to be � 800 R⊙, indicating that the SN originated from a red supergiant star. The distance to the SN host galaxy is estimated to be 24.3 Mpc from expanding photosphere method (epm). From our observations, we estimate that 0.064 M⊙ of 56 Ni was synthesized in the explosion. General relativistic, radiation hydrodynamical modeling of the SN infers an explosion energy of 0.35 × 10 51 erg, a progenitor mass (at the time of explosion) of � 9 M⊙ and an initial radius of � 600 R⊙.