Related papers: GRB progenitors at low metallicities
Those massive stars that, during their deaths, give rise to gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) must be endowed with an unusually large amount of angular momentum in their inner regions, one to two orders of magnitude greater than the ones that make…
If Wolf-Rayet stars are the progenitors of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), they must rotate rapidly to produce the GRB. This rotation may effect their stellar-wind bubbles and possibly explain why so many GRB afterglows occur in a constant density…
The origin of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is still a fascinating field of research nowadays. While we have been collecting more and more observationally constrained properties of GRB-physics, new theoretical results on the progenitor evolution…
Gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow observations have allowed us to significantly constrain the engines producing these energetic explosions. Te redshift and position information provided by these afterglows have already allowed us to limit the…
We use population synthesis to construct distributions of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) for different proposed progenitor models. We use a description of star formation that takes into account the evolution of metallicity with redshift and galaxy…
The observed properties of long gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies show them to often be of a rather low metallicity and/or of high specific star formation rate (SFR). It is not clear which of these properties is a dominant factor in…
Knowledge of the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae is a fundamental component in understanding the explosions. The recent progress in finding such stars is reviewed. The minimum initial mass that can produce a supernova has converged…
Both theoretical models and observations of collapsar created gamma-ray bursts -- typically long-duration gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) -- suggest that these transients cannot occur at high metallicity, likely due to angular momentum losses via…
Red supergiants have been confirmed as the progenitor stars of the majority of hydrogen-rich type II supernovae. However, while such stars are observed with masses >25M$_\odot$, detections of >18M$_\odot$ progenitors remain elusive. Red…
Because massive, low-metallicity population III (PopIII) stars may produce very powerful long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs), high-redshift GRB observations could probe the properties of the first stars. We analyze the correlation between early…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are the most intense electromagnetic (EM) sources in the Universe. Long GRB (LGRB) correspond to those events with a typical prompt emission of more than a few seconds. It is generally assumed that they are originated…
Evidence is growing for a class of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) characterized by an initial ~0.1-1 s spike of hard radiation followed, after a ~3-10 s lull in emission, by a softer period of extended emission lasting ~10-100 s. In a few…
Unique data on $BVRI$ light curves of the optical transient (OT) of GRB 970508 obtained with the 6-m telescope have been interpreted in the framework of the idea of a straightforward link between supernovae (SNe) and long duration gamma-ray…
Long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) are typically thought to result from the collapse of massive stars. Nonetheless, recent observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) 211211A and 230307A, coupled with the low-redshift excess of LGRB event rates…
The current Swift sample of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with measured redshifts allows to test the assumption that GRBs trace the star formation in the Universe. Some authors have claimed that the rate of GRBs increases with cosmic redshift…
The majority of energetic long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are thought to arise from the collapse of massive stars, making them powerful tracers of star formation across cosmic time. Evidence for this origin comes from the presence of…
We report the discovery of additional hot and massive stars in the cluster surrounding the soft gamma repeater SGR 1806-20, based upon UKIRT and Keck near-infrared spectroscopy. Of the newly identified stars, three are Wolf-Rayet stars of…
We investigate the properties of both the prompt and X-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in the burst frame with a sample of 33 Swift GRBs. Assuming that the steep decay segment in the canonical X-ray afterglow lightcurves is due to…
This is a brief review on the first Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) optical identifications - GRB host galaxies and Star Forming Rate (SFR) at relatively small redshifts (z), on the metallicities of GRB hosts, the similarities and differences…
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…