Late-Time Radio Observations of 68 Type Ibc Supernovae: Strong Constraints on Off-Axis Gamma-Ray Bursts

By A. Soderberg, E. Nakar, E. Berger, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni. 2005

194 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present late-time radio observations of 68 local Type Ibc supernovae, including six events with broad optical absorption lines ("hypernovae"). None of these objects exhibit radio emission attributable to off-axis gamma-ray burst jets spreading into our line of sight. Comparison with our afterglow models reveals the following conclusions. (1) Less than ~10% of Type Ibc supernovae are associated with typical gamma-ray bursts initially directed away from our line of sight; this places an empirical constraint on the GRB beaming factor of ⟨f⟩ ≲ 104, corresponding to an average jet opening angle, θj ≳ 0.°8. (2) This holds in particular for the broad-lined supernovae (SNe 1997dq, 1997ef, 1998ey, 2002ap, 2002bl, and 2003jd), which have been argued to host GRB jets. Our observations reveal no evidence for typical (or even subenergetic) GRBs and rule out the scenario in which every broad-lined SN harbors a GRB at the 84% confidence level. Their large photospheric velocities and asymmetric ejecta (inferred from spectropolarimetry and nebular spectroscopy) appear to be characteristic of the nonrelativistic SN explosion and do not necessarily imply the existence of associated GRB jets.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1a6e2a5b2783f05617aad5cf4a289f5a82bb7a74

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. B. Metzger
4. D. Kasen
5. E. Quataert
6. T. Thompson
7. S. Smartt
8. Stan Woosley

In Instrumentation

1. Bing Zhang
2. Stan Woosley
3. E. Berger
4. B. Metzger
5. T. Thompson
6. E. Quataert
7. A. Filippenko
8. M. Della Valle

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. B. Metzger
2. E. Berger
3. D. Kasen
4. T. Thompson
5. Stan Woosley
6. E. Quataert
7. Bing Zhang
8. Alexander Heger

Citations in the corpus

• Circumstellar Emission from Type Ib and Ic Supernovae (2006, background): “— (1) Weiler et al. 1986; (2) Panagia et al. 1986; (3) Van Dyk et al. 1993; (4) Stockdale et al. 2005; (5) Ryder et al. 2004; (6) Berger et al. 2002; (7) Soderberg et al. 2005; (8) Soderberg et al. 2006a.”
• The Broad-lined Type Ic SN 2003jd (2007, background): “Even though there was no late-time radio of SN 2003jd, suggesting no evidence for a typical GRB viewed off-axis (Soderberg et al. 2006), an off-axis GRB in a low-density circumstellar medium cannot be excluded.”
• The Supernova Gamma-Ray Burst Connection (2006, background): “If GRB-SNe are a particular subset of Type Ibc SNe, then it is useful to ask if the GRB-SNe sample draws only from the bright end of the Type Ibc distribution (Bloom, 2005; Soderberg et al., 2006b).”
• OPTICAL SPECTRA OF 73 STRIPPED-ENVELOPE CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE (2014, background): “Thus, many publications since then refer to this SN as an SN Ic-bl (e.g., Soderberg et al. 2006; Guetta & Della Valle 2007; Modjaz et al. 2008a; Taubenberger et al. 2009; Maurer et al. 2010).”
• Characterizing Supernova Progenitors via the Metallicities of their Host Galaxies, from Poor Dwarfs to Rich Spirals (2007, background): “This event is therefore an excellent candidate for a search for an off-axis GRB jet in radio (Soderberg et al. 2006) and possibly other wavelengths.”
• Electromagnetic counterparts of compact object mergers powered by the radioactive decay of r‐process nuclei (2010, background): “Although some emission may be observed by off-axis viewers, such “or- phan” afterglows (e.g. Totani & Panaitescu 2002) are typically expected to peak at radio wavelengths on a timescale of months-years (Soderberg et al. 2006; Rossi et al. 2008; Zhang & MacFadyen 2009).”
• On the Progenitor of SN 2005gl and the Nature of Type IIn Supernovae (2006, background): “Also, perhaps some SNe IIb arise from single WN (H rich) W-R stars (Soderberg et al. 2006a).”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, result): “Note that this supposition is also consistent with the study of [273] who looked for off-axis radio emission from GRBs pointed away from Earth, finding <10% of all SNe Ibc are associated with GRBs pointed away from our line of sight.”
• Nebular emission-line profiles of Type Ib/c supernovae - Probing the ejecta asphericity (2009, background): “SN 2003jd was not detected at radio wavelengths (Soderberg et al. 2006), so that its association with a GRB remains uncertain.”
• SN 2004aw: confirming diversity of Type Ic supernovae (2006, background): “SN 2003jd exhibits a double-peaked [O i] line, indicating that it might be a GRB-SN viewed well off-axis (Mazzali et al. 2005b, but see also Soderberg et al. 2006).”
• On the Rates of Gamma-Ray Bursts and Type Ib/c Supernovae (2006, methodology): “%) may suggest the existence of two physically distinct classes of GRBs (e.g., Cobb et al. 2006; Soderberg et al. 2006b) in which LL GRBs are (intrinsically) more frequent events than HL GRBs.”
• Low-Luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts as a Unique Population: Luminosity Function, Local Rate, and Beaming Factor (2006, background): “This scenario calls for a different type of progenitors (e.g. neutron stars rather than black holes) for LL-GRBs from those of HL-GRBs (e.g. Mazzali et al. 2006; Soderberg et al. 2006b).”
• Magnetized relativistic jets and long-duration GRBs from magnetar spin-down during core-collapse supernovae (2009, background): “However, the converse is not true (Soderberg et al. 2006; Woosley & Bloom 2006).”