Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2012
Introduction
The discovery and localization of the first afterglows of GRBs rapidly led to the establishment of the long-sought distance scale for the sources (see Chapter 4), which began an earnest observational hunt for their progenitors. A preponderance of evidence linked long-duration, soft-spectrum GRBs with the death of massive stars. The observations of the GRB-supernova (SN) connection, the main subject of this chapter, present the most direct evidence of this physical link.
Well before the afterglow era, Paczyński (1986) noted that “cosmological” distances of GRBs would imply that the energy release in gamma rays would be comparable to the energy release in a typical SN explosion. Seen as more than just a coincidence, this energetics connection between GRBs and the death of massive stars was fleshed out into what is now referred to as the collapsar model (Woosley 1993, 1996, MacFadyen & Woosley 1999). Briefly, the collapsar involves the core-collapse explosion of a stripped-envelope massive star. Matter flows towards a newly formed black hole or rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron star (“magnetar”; e.g., Bucciantini et al. 2009). Powerful jets plow through the collapsing star along the spin axis, eventually obtain relativistic speeds, and produce GRBs. Enough 56Ni is produced near the central compact source to power a supernova explosion of the star. The original “failed Ib” model posited that little 56Ni would be produced during core collapse of a massive star that produces a GRB, and thus no traditional SN would be visible.
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