We present densely-sampled ultraviolet/optical photometric and low-resolution optical spectroscopic observations of the type IIP supernova 2013ab in the nearby ( \sim 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 \sim 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 ( ) prescription , the initial temperature evolution of the SN emission allows us to estimate the progenitor radius to be \sim 800 R _ { \odot } , 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 _ { \odot } of ^ { 56 } Ni was synthesized in the explosion .
General relativistic , radiation hydrodynamical modeling of the SN infers an explosion energy of 0.35 \times 10 ^ { 51 } erg , a progenitor mass ( at the time of explosion ) of \sim 9 M _ { \odot } and an initial radius of \sim 600 R _ { \odot } .