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Published October 10, 2016 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Radio observations of a sample of broad-lined type Ic supernovae discovered by PTF/iPTF: A search for relativistic explosions

Abstract

Long duration γ-ray bursts are a rare subclass of stripped-envelope core-collapse supernovae (SNe) that launch collimated relativistic outflows (jets). All γ-ray-burst-associated SNe are spectroscopically Type Ic, with broad-lines, but the fraction of broad-lined SNe Ic harboring low-luminosity γ-ray bursts remains largely unconstrained. Some SNe should be accompanied by off-axis γ-ray burst jets that initially remain invisible, but then emerge as strong radio sources (as the jets decelerate). However, this critical prediction of the jet model for γ-ray bursts has yet to be verified observationally. Here, we present K. G. Jansky Very Large Array observations of 15 broad-lined SNe of Type Ic discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory in an untargeted manner. Most of the SNe in our sample exclude radio emission observationally similar to that of the radio-loud, relativistic SN 1998bw. We constrain the fraction of 1998bw-like broad-lined SNe Ic to be ≾41% (99.865% confidence). Most of the events in our sample also exclude off-axis jets similar to GRB 031203 and GRB 030329, but we cannot rule out off-axis γ-ray bursts expanding in a low-density wind environment. Three SNe in our sample are detected in the radio. PTF11qcj and PTF14dby show late-time radio emission with average ejecta speeds of ≈0.3–0.4 c, on the dividing line between relativistic and "ordinary" SNe. The speed of PTF11cmh radio ejecta is poorly constrained. We estimate that ≾85% 99.865% confidence) of the broad-lined SNe Ic in our sample may harbor off-axis γ-ray bursts expanding in media with densities in the range probed by this study.

Additional Information

© 2016 American Astronomical Society. Received 2015 December 3; revised 2016 July 13; accepted 2016 July 13; published 2016 October 10. A.C. thanks P. Chandra for graciously providing the data for the average long GRB radio light curve showing in Figure 4. A.C. acknowledges support from the NSF CAREER award #1455090. A.C. and N.P. acknowledge partial support from NASA/Swift Cycle 10 and 11 GI via grants NNX15AB79G and NNX16AC12G. A.G.Y.'s team is supported by the EU/FP7 via ERC grant No. 307260 the Quantum universe I-Core program by the Israeli Committee for planning and budgeting and the ISF; by Minerva and ISF grants; by the Weizmann-UK "making connections" program; and by Kimmel and ARCHES awards. K.M. acknowledges support from the STFC through an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship. M.M.K. acknowledges partial support from the GROWTH project via NSF grant 1545949. M.S. acknowledges support from the Royal Society and EU/FP7-ERC grant No. 615929. The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array is operated by NRAO, for the NSF under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. W. M. Keck Observatory, is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The William Herschel Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias. The authors acknowledge the High Performance Computing Center (HPCC) at Texas Tech University at Lubbock (http://cmsdev.ttu.edu/hpcc) for providing HPC resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. This research also used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

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Published - Corsi_2016_ApJ_830_42.pdf

Submitted - 1512.01303.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023