X-rays from Core-collapse Supernovae

Core-collapse supernovae can produce X-rays through a variety of mechanisms, which are briefly reviewed. Through a combination of targeted searches of specific supernovae and archival searches for serendipitous coverage of supernovae, the number of known X-ray supernovae has grown by a factor of five in the past 13 years, when the Chandra X-ray Observatory and XMM-Newton were launched. The Swift satellite has contributed greatly to the discovery of X-ray emitted supernovae, but care must taken with all Swift detections given its spatial resolution and the number of X-ray binaries typically seen in external galaxies. About half of the reported Swift detections of X-ray emission from supernovae are in fact not due to the supernovae but from unrelated nearby sources in the host galaxies.