No Arabic abstract
We present a search for late-time rebrightening of radio emission from three supernovae (SNe) with associated gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). It has been previously proposed that the unusually energetic SNe associated with GRBs should enter the Sedov-Taylor phase decades after the stellar explosion, and this SN remnant emission will outshine the GRB radio afterglow and be detectable at significant distances. We place deep limits on the radio luminosity of GRB 980425/SN 1998bw, GRB 030329/SN 2003dh and GRB 060218/SN 2006aj, 10-18 years after explosion, with our deepest limit being $L_{ u}$ $< 4 times 10^{26}$ erg s$^{-1}$ Hz$^{-1}$ for GRB 980425/SN 1998bw. We put constraints on the density of the surrounding medium for various assumed values of the microphysical parameters related to the magnetic field and synchrotron-emitting electrons. For GRB 060218/SN 2006aj and GRB 980425/SN 1998bw, these density limits have implications for the density profile of the surrounding medium, while the non-detection of GRB 030329/SN 2003dh implies that its afterglow will not be detectable anymore at GHz frequencies.
GRB 080503, detected by Swift, belongs to the class of bursts whose prompt phase consists of an initial short spike followed by a longer soft tail. It did not show any transition to a regular afterglow at the end of the prompt emission but exhibited a surprising rebrightening after one day. We aim to explain this rebrightening with two different scenarios - refreshed shocks or a density clump in the circumburst medium - and two models for the origin of the afterglow, the standard one where it comes from the forward shock, and an alternative one where it results from a long-lived reverse shock. We computed afterglow light curves either using a single-zone approximation for the shocked region or a detailed multizone method that more accurately accounts for the compression of the material. We find that in several of the considered cases the detailed model must be used to obtain a reliable description of the shock dynamics. The density clump scenario is not favored. We confirm previous results that the presence of the clump has little effect on the forward shock emission, except if the microphysics parameters evolve when the shock enters the clump. Moreover, we find that the rebrightening from the reverse shock is also too weak when it is calculated with the multi-zone method. On the other hand, in the refreshed-shock scenario both the forward and reverse shock models provide satisfactory fits of the data under some additional conditions on the distribution of the Lorentz factor in the ejecta and the beaming angle of the relativistic outflow.
Deriving physical parameters from gamma-ray burst afterglow observations remains a challenge, even now, 20 years after the discovery of afterglows. The main reason for the lack of progress is that the peak of the synchrotron emission is in the sub-mm range, thus requiring radio observations in conjunction with X-ray/optical/near-infrared data in order to measure the corresponding spectral slopes and consequently remove the ambiguity wrt. slow vs. fast cooling and the ordering of the characteristic frequencies. We observed GRB 151027B, the 1000th Swift-detected GRB, with GROND in the optical-NIR, ALMA in the sub-millimeter, ATCA in the radio band, and combine this with public Swift-XRT X-ray data. While some observations at crucial times only return upper limits or surprising features, the fireball model is narrowly constrained by our data set, and allows us to draw a consistent picture with a fully-determined parameter set. Surprisingly, we find rapid, large-amplitude flux density variations in the radio band which are extreme not only for GRBs, but generally for any radio source. We interpret these as scintillation effects, though the extreme nature requires either the scattering screen to be at much smaller distance than usually assumed, multiple screens, or a combination of the two.
GRB200522A is a short duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) at redshift $z$=0.554 characterized by a bright infrared counterpart. A possible, although not unambiguous, interpretation of the observed emission is the onset of a luminous kilonova powered by a rapidly rotating and highly-magnetized neutron star, known as magnetar. A bright radio flare, arising from the interaction of the kilonova ejecta with the surrounding medium, is a prediction of this model. Whereas the available dataset remains open to multiple interpretations (e.g. afterglow, r-process kilonova, magnetar-powered kilonova), long-term radio monitoring of this burst may be key to discriminate between models. We present our late-time upper limit on the radio emission of GRB200522A, carried out with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array at 288 days after the burst. For kilonova ejecta with energy $E_{rm ej} approx 10^{53} rm erg$, as expected for a long-lived magnetar remnant, we can already rule out ejecta masses $M_{rm ej} lesssim0.03 mathrm{M}_odot$ for the most likely range of circumburst densities $ngtrsim 10^{-3}$ cm$^{-3}$. Observations on timescales of $approx$3-10 yr after the merger will probe larger ejecta masses up to $M_{rm ej} sim 0.1 mathrm{M}_odot$, providing a robust test to the magnetar scenario.
We examine a sample of 21 gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow light curves at radio frequencies, and compare them to the X-ray and/or optical properties of the afterglows and to the predictions of the standard jet/fireball model. Our sample includes every textit{Swift} GRB with an X-ray light curve indicating a jet break and with a published radio light curve, as well as several other targets with observed X-ray or and/optical jet breaks. We examine the late-time decline of each burst, and attempt to fit an analytical model based on the standard GRB afterglow equations to each data set. We show that most of the events in our textit{Swift} GRB sample are incompatible with the radio light curve behavior predicted by conventional afterglow theory. Many exhibit a late-time radio decline incompatible with the post-break X-ray or optical afterglow. Only one radio afterglow in this sample, at any time, shows the eventually expected decline of $sim t^{-2}$, although two others show it in their mm light curve. Several others remain consistent with the standard model if such a decline began after the observations. The radio behavior alone does not, however, indicate whether a GRB can be fit by our modeling code. Indeed, several of the well-fit GRBs may only appear so due to a lack of multi-wavelength data. While a second source of emission can account for some of the anomalous radio behavior, our tests indicate this is often not the case unless the main jet component is simultaneously suppressed.
We present results of a search for late-time radio emission and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) from a sample of type-I superluminous supernovae (SLSNe-I). We used the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array to observe ten SLSN-I more than 5 years old at a frequency of 3 GHz. We searched fast-sampled visibilities for FRBs and used the same data to perform a deep imaging search for late-time radio emission expected in models of magnetar-powered supernovae. No FRBs were found. One SLSN-I, PTF10hgi, is detected in deep imaging, corresponding to a luminosity of $1.2times10^{28}$ erg s$^{-1}$. This luminosity, considered with the recent 6 GHz detection of PTF10hgi in Eftekhari et al (2019), supports the interpretation that it is powered by a young, fast-spinning ($sim$ ms spin period) magnetar with $sim$ 15 Msun of partially ionized ejecta. Broadly, our observations are most consistent with SLSNe-I being powered by neutron stars with fast spin periods, although most require more free-free absorption than is inferred for PTF10hgi. We predict that radio observations at higher frequencies or in the near future will detect these systems and begin constraining properties of the young pulsars and their birth environments.