SN2012fh Paper

Current explanations of the mass-loss mechanism for stripped-envelope supernovae (SESNe) remain divided between single and binary progenitor systems. Here we obtain deep ultraviolet (UV) imaging with the {\it Hubble Space Telescope (HST)} of the Type Ic SN 2012fh to search for the presence of a surviving companion star to the progenitor. We synthesize these observations with archival {\it HST} imaging, ground-based spectroscopy, and previous analyses from the literature to provide three independent constraints on the progenitor system. We fit the color-magnitude diagram of the surrounding population to constrain the most likely age of the system to be $<20$\,Myr.  Analysis of spectra of SN~2012fh provide an estimate of the He core mass of the progenitor star, $>5.6$ M$_{\odot}$.  We analyze deep {\it HST} images at the precise location after the SN faded to constrain the luminosity of any remaining main-sequence binary companion to be $\log(L/L_{\odot}) \lesssim 3.35$. Combining  observational constraints with current binary population synthesis models excludes the presence of a faint stellar companion SN~2012fh at the $\lesssim10\%$ level. The  progenitor was therefore either effectively isolated at the time of explosion or orbited by a black-hole companion.  The latter scenario dominates if we only consider models that produce successful supernovae.