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Blanchard PK, Villar VA, Chornock R, Laskar T, Li Y, Leja J, Pierel J, Berger E, Margutti R, Alexander KD, Barnes J, Cendes Y, Eftekhari T, Kasen D, LeBaron N, Metzger BD, Muzerolle Page J, Rest A, Sears H, Siegel DM, Yadavalli SK. JWST detection of a supernova associated with GRB 221009A without an r-process signature. NATURE ASTRONOMY 2024; 8:774-785. [PMID: 38912294 PMCID: PMC11189819 DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02237-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2023] [Accepted: 03/05/2024] [Indexed: 06/25/2024]
Abstract
Identifying the sites of r-process nucleosynthesis, a primary mechanism of heavy element production, is a key goal of astrophysics. The discovery of the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) to date, GRB 221009A, presented an opportunity to spectroscopically test the idea that r-process elements are produced following the collapse of rapidly rotating massive stars. Here we present James Webb Space Telescope observations of GRB 221009A obtained +168 and +170 rest-frame days after the gamma-ray trigger, and demonstrate that they are well described by a SN 1998bw-like supernova (SN) and power-law afterglow, with no evidence for a component from r-process emission. The SN, with a nickel mass of approximately 0.09 M ⊙, is only slightly fainter than the brightness of SN 1998bw at this phase, which indicates that the SN is not an unusual GRB-SN. This demonstrates that the GRB and SN mechanisms are decoupled and that highly energetic GRBs are not likely to produce significant quantities of r-process material, which leaves open the question of whether explosions of massive stars are key sources of r-process elements. Moreover, the host galaxy of GRB 221009A has a very low metallicity of approximately 0.12 Z ⊙ and strong H2 emission at the explosion site, which is consistent with recent star formation, hinting that environmental factors are responsible for its extreme energetics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter K. Blanchard
- Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
| | - V. Ashley Villar
- Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA USA
| | - Ryan Chornock
- Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA
| | - Tanmoy Laskar
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT USA
- Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
| | - Yijia Li
- Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA
- Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA
| | - Joel Leja
- Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA
- Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA
- Institute for Computational & Data Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA
| | - Justin Pierel
- Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD USA
| | - Edo Berger
- Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA USA
| | - Raffaella Margutti
- Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA
- Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA
| | | | - Jennifer Barnes
- Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA USA
| | - Yvette Cendes
- Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA USA
| | - Tarraneh Eftekhari
- Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
| | - Daniel Kasen
- Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA
| | - Natalie LeBaron
- Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA
| | - Brian D. Metzger
- Department of Physics and Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, NY USA
- Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY USA
| | | | - Armin Rest
- Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD USA
| | - Huei Sears
- Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
| | - Daniel M. Siegel
- Institute of Physics, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario Canada
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Yang YH, Troja E, O'Connor B, Fryer CL, Im M, Durbak J, Paek GSH, Ricci R, Bom CR, Gillanders JH, Castro-Tirado AJ, Peng ZK, Dichiara S, Ryan G, van Eerten H, Dai ZG, Chang SW, Choi H, De K, Hu Y, Kilpatrick CD, Kutyrev A, Jeong M, Lee CU, Makler M, Navarete F, Pérez-García I. A lanthanide-rich kilonova in the aftermath of a long gamma-ray burst. Nature 2024; 626:742-745. [PMID: 38383623 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06979-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/31/2023] [Accepted: 12/14/2023] [Indexed: 02/23/2024]
Abstract
Observationally, kilonovae are astrophysical transients powered by the radioactive decay of nuclei heavier than iron, thought to be synthesized in the merger of two compact objects1-4. Over the first few days, the kilonova evolution is dominated by a large number of radioactive isotopes contributing to the heating rate2,5. On timescales of weeks to months, its behaviour is predicted to differ depending on the ejecta composition and the merger remnant6-8. Previous work has shown that the kilonova associated with gamma-ray burst 230307A is similar to kilonova AT2017gfo (ref. 9), and mid-infrared spectra revealed an emission line at 2.15 micrometres that was attributed to tellurium. Here we report a multi-wavelength analysis, including publicly available James Webb Space Telescope data9 and our own Hubble Space Telescope data, for the same gamma-ray burst. We model its evolution up to two months after the burst and show that, at these late times, the recession of the photospheric radius and the rapidly decaying bolometric luminosity (Lbol ∝ t-2.7±0.4, where t is time) support the recombination of lanthanide-rich ejecta as they cool.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu-Han Yang
- Department of Physics, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy.
| | - Eleonora Troja
- Department of Physics, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy.
- INAF - Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Rome, Italy.
| | - Brendan O'Connor
- Department of Physics, The George Washington University, Washington DC, USA
- Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
- Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
| | - Chris L Fryer
- Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
- Center for Theoretical Astrophysics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
- The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
- The George Washington University, Washington DC, USA
| | - Myungshin Im
- SNU Astronomy Research Center, Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Joe Durbak
- Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
- Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
| | - Gregory S H Paek
- SNU Astronomy Research Center, Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Roberto Ricci
- Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Turin, Italy
- INAF - Istituto di Radioastronomia, Bologna, Italy
| | - Clécio R Bom
- Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica Celso Suckow da Fonseca, Rodovia Mário Covas, Itaguaí, Brazil
| | | | - Alberto J Castro-Tirado
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Granada, Spain
- Unidad Asociada al CSIC Departamento de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, Escuela de Ingenierías Industriales, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain
| | - Zong-Kai Peng
- Institute for Frontier in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- Department of Astronomy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Simone Dichiara
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
| | - Geoffrey Ryan
- Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
| | | | - Zi-Gao Dai
- Department of Astronomy, School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
| | - Seo-Won Chang
- SNU Astronomy Research Center, Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Hyeonho Choi
- SNU Astronomy Research Center, Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Kishalay De
- Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Youdong Hu
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Granada, Spain
| | - Charles D Kilpatrick
- Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
| | - Alexander Kutyrev
- Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
- Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
| | - Mankeun Jeong
- SNU Astronomy Research Center, Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Chung-Uk Lee
- Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
| | - Martin Makler
- Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- International Center for Advanced Studies and Instituto de Ciencias Físicas, ECyT-UNSAM and CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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