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TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER: 2174
SUBJECT: SNeIa AS THE POSSIBLE PROGENITORS OF SHORT-DURATION GRBs.
DATE: 03/04/27 17:01:23 GMT
FROM: Arnon Dar at Technion-Israel Inst. of Tech <arnon@physics.technion.ac.il>
Arnon Dar (Technion and CERN) and Alvaro De Rujula (CERN) report:
There is mounting evidence that LONG-DURATION GRBs are produced
in core-collapse (Types Ib,Ic,II) supernova (SN) explosions, as advocated
in the CannonBall (CB) model. The GRB and its afterglow are both made
as highly relativistic plasmoids, or CBs, (Lorentz factors gamma ~ 1000)
interact with the circumstellar wind and with the interstellar medium
(ISM). The CBs are emitted, as in quasars and micro-quasars, as
material accretes onto the newly-born compact object, shortly after
the core-collapse. The GRB and its afterglow are observable only if the
supernova is viewed at an angle of order 1/gamma (i.e. within
milliradians) of the CBs' flight direction [1].
It is a natural possibility, in the CB model, that SHORT-DURATION GRBs be
made --in an analogous fashion-- by CBs emitted, also in an
accretion-induced process, in Type Ia SN explosions. Type Ia and
core-collapse SNe may have quite different environments. Less "wind" and a
higher ISM circumburst density in Type Ia SNe do, in the CB model, imply a
harder and shorter GRB, as well as a much faster declining (and
hard-to-detect) afterglow.
The Type Ia SNe perhaps responsible for short-duration GRBs may be
observable, provided one looks at the GRBs' location --EVEN IN THE ABSENCE
OF AN OBSERVED GRB AFTERGLOW-- around 20 (1+z) days after the explosion,
when their (peak, unextinct, bolometric) luminosity is ~ 10^{43.35} erg/s.
We suggest the use of the most sensitive NIR/optical telescopes to search
the error box of SHORT GRBs for associated Type Ia SNe. Should such SNe be
found there, they could be used to localize the short GRBs, identify their
host galaxies, measure their redshifts, and dramatically increase the
detection rate of cosmological supernovae.
[1] S. Dado, Arnon Dar and A. De Rujula, astro-ph/0304106 and
references therein.
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