English

Collapsar Gamma-Ray Bursts: how the luminosity function dictates the duration distribution

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2017-10-11 v2

Abstract

Jets in long-duration γ\gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have to drill through the collapsing star in order to break out of it and produce the γ\gamma-ray signal while the central engine is still active. If the breakout time is shorter for more powerful engines, then the jet-collapsar interaction acts as a filter of less luminous jets. We show that the observed broken power-law GRB luminosity function is a natural outcome of this process. For a theoretically motivated breakout time that scales with jet luminosity as LχL^{-\chi} with χ1/31/2\chi\sim 1/3-1/2, we show that the shape of the γ\gamma-ray duration distribution can be uniquely determined by the GRB luminosity function and matches the observed one. This analysis has also interesting implications about the supernova-central engine connection. We show that not only successful jets can deposit sufficient energy in the stellar envelope to power the GRB-associated supernovae, but also failed jets may operate in all Type Ib/c supernovae.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.01914,
  title  = {Collapsar Gamma-Ray Bursts: how the luminosity function dictates the duration distribution},
  author = {Maria Petropoulou and Rodolfo Barniol Duran and Dimitrios Giannios},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.01914},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:39:59.720Z