No Arabic abstract
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) are the signatures of extraordinarily high-energy events occurring in our universe. Since their discovery, we have determined that these events are produced during the core-collapse deaths of rare young massive stars. The host galaxies of LGRBs are an excellent means of probing the environments and populations that produce their unusual progenitors. In addition, these same young stellar progenitors makes LGRBs and their host galaxies valuable potentially powerful tracers of star formation and metallicity at high redshifts. However, properly utilizing LGRBs as probes of the early universe requires a thorough understanding of their formation and the host environments that they sample. This review looks back at some of the recent work on LGRB host galaxies that has advanced our understanding of these events and their cosmological applications, and considers the many new questions that we are poised to pursue in the coming years.
Decades ago two classes of gamma-ray bursts were identified and delineated as having durations shorter and longer than about 2 s. Subsequently indications also supported the existence of a third class. Using maximum likelihood estimation we analyze the duration distribution of 888 Swift BAT bursts observed before October 2015. Fitting three log-normal functions to the duration distribution of the bursts provides a better fit than two log-normal distributions, with 99.9999% significance. Similarly to earlier results, we found that a fourth component is not needed. The relative frequencies of the distribution of the groups are 8% for short, 35% for intermediate and 57% for long bursts which correspond to our previous results. We analyse the redshift distribution for the 269 GRBs of the 888 GRBs with known redshift. We find no evidence for the previously suggested difference between the long and intermediate GRBs redshift distribution. The observed redshift distribution of the 20 short GRBs differs with high significance from the distributions of the other groups.
We present MCRaT, a Monte Carlo Radiation Transfer code for self-consistently computing the light curves and spectra of the photospheric emission from relativistic, unmagnetized jets. We apply MCRaT to a relativistic hydrodynamic simulation of a long duration gamma-ray burst jet, and present the resulting light-curves and time-dependent spectra for observers at various angles from the jet axis. We compare our results to observational results and find that photospheric emission is a viable model to explain the prompt phase of long-duration gamma-ray bursts at the peak frequency and above, but faces challenges in reproducing the flat spectrum below the peak frequency. We finally discuss possible limitations of these results both in terms of the hydrodynamics and the radiation transfer and how these limitations could affect the conclusions that we present.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) display a bimodal duration distribution, with a separation between the short- and long-duration bursts at about 2 sec. The progenitors of long GRBs have been identified as massive stars based on their association with Type Ic core-collapse supernovae, their exclusive location in star-forming galaxies, and their strong correlation with bright ultraviolet regions within their host galaxies. Short GRBs have long been suspected on theoretical grounds to arise from compact object binary mergers (NS-NS or NS-BH). The discovery of short GRB afterglows in 2005, provided the first insight into their energy scale and environments, established a cosmological origin, a mix of host galaxy types, and an absence of associated supernovae. In this review I summarize nearly a decade of short GRB afterglow and host galaxy observations, and use this information to shed light on the nature and properties of their progenitors, the energy scale and collimation of the relativistic outflow, and the properties of the circumburst environments. The preponderance of the evidence points to compact object binary progenitors, although some open questions remain. Based on this association, observations of short GRBs and their afterglows can shed light on the on- and off-axis electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave sources from the Advanced LIGO/Virgo experiments.
We present the results of CO observations toward 14 host galaxies of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) at z = 0.1-2.5 by using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. We successfully detected CO(3-2) or CO(4-3) emission in eight hosts (z = 0.3-2), which more than doubles the sample size of GRB hosts with CO detection. The derived molecular gas mass is $M_{rm gas} = (0.2-6) times 10^{10}$ $M_{odot}$ assuming metallicity-dependent CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factors. By using the largest sample of GRB hosts with molecular gas estimates (25 in total, of which 14 are CO-detected) including results from the literature, we compared molecular gas properties with those of other star-forming galaxies (SFGs). The GRB hosts tend to have a higher molecular gas mass fraction ($mu_{rm gas}$) and a shorter gas depletion timescale ($t_{rm depl}$) as compared with other SFGs at similar redshifts especially at $z lesssim 1$. This could be a common property of GRB hosts or an effect introduced by the selection of targets which are typically above the main-sequence line. To eliminate the effect of selection bias, we analyzed $mu_{rm gas}$ and $t_{rm depl}$ as a function of the distance from the main-sequence line ($delta$MS). We find that the GRB hosts follow the same scaling relations as other SFGs, where $mu_{rm gas}$ increases and $t_{rm depl}$ decreases with increasing $delta {rm MS}$. No molecular gas deficit is observed when compared to other SFGs of similar SFR and stellar mass. These findings suggest that the same star-formation mechanism is expected to be happening in GRB hosts as in other SFGs.
Broad-line Ic supernovae (SNe Ic-BL) are a very rare class of core-collapse supernovae exhibiting high ejecta velocities and high kinetic energies. They are the only type of SNe that accompany long gamma-ray burst (GRB) explosions. Systematic differences found in the spectra of SNe Ic-BL with and without GRBs (GRB-SNe and SNe Ic-BL, respectively) suggest that either the progenitor or/and explosion mechanism of SNe Ic-BL with and without a GRB differ, or the difference could be only due to the viewing angle of the observer with respect to the orientation of the collimated explosion. We present the systematic comparison of the host galaxies of broad-lined SNe Ic with and without a detected GRB, the latter being detected in untargeted surveys, with the aim to find out whether there are any systematic differences between the environments in which these two classes of SNe preferentially explode. We study photometric properties of the host galaxies of a sample of 8 GRB-SNe and a sample of 28 SNe Ic-BL at z < 0.2. The two galaxy samples have indistinguishable luminosity and proper size distribution. We find indications that GRB-SNe on average occur closer to the centres of their host galaxies, i.e. the samples have a different distribution of projected offsets, normalized by the galaxy sizes. In addition we compare gas-phase metallicities of the GRB-SNe and SNe Ic-BL host samples and find that a larger fraction of super-solar metallicity hosts are found among the SNe Ic-BL without a GRB. Our results are indicative of a genuine difference between the two types of explosions and suggest that the viewing angle is not the main source of difference in the spectra of the two classes. We discuss the implications our results have on our understanding of progenitors of SNe Ic-BL with and without a GRB.