The Color Evolution of the Optical Afterglow of GRB 030329 and the Implications for the Underlying Supernova SN 2003Dh
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A&A 427, 901–905 (2004) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20041548 & c ESO 2004 Astrophysics The color evolution of the optical afterglow of GRB 030329 and the implications for the underlying supernova SN 2003dh V. Š im on 1,R.Hudec1, and G. Pizzichini2 1 Astronomical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 251 65 Ondrejov,ˇ Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] 2 IASF/CNR, Sezione di Bologna, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy Received 4 February 2004 / Accepted 30 June 2004 Abstract. We find that the color indices (B − V)0,(V − R)0,(R − I)0,(I − J)0 in the observer frame of the optical afterglow (OA) of GRB 030329 during t − T0 < 10 days are consistent with those of a uniform group of 25 OAs of GRBs, previously analyzed by Šimon et al. (2001; 2003a). The synchrotron component with parameters similar to those of the other 25 OAs was thus initially dominant in the optical and IR spectrum of the OA of GRB 030329. Following the arguments of Šimon et al. (2001), it also appears that either GRB 030329 was not located deep inside a star-forming region or that the local dust was destroyed by ≈− . − = . the intense initial flash. The absolute R magnitude of this event MR0 26 6 mag in the rest frame at (t T0)rest 0 25 days is in good agreement with the typical brightness of the OAs analyzed by Šimon et al. (2001). We detected large color variations of the OA of GRB 030329 only for t − T0 > 12 days, which suggest a rapid evolution of the spectrum of the underlying SN 2003dh. We compare it with the individual type Ic SNe and find that its color evolution is plausibly matched only by that of SN 1998bw although the indices still reveal spectral differences between the two objects. The agreement is particularly good only at t − T0 = 26 and 27 days. The evolution of SN 2003dh becomes faster than that of SN 1998bw later on and SN 2003dh develops an excess light in the red/IR spectral region. We also emphasize the discordance with other type Ic SNe which are not associated with GRBs. Key words. gamma rays: bursts – radiation mechanisms: non-thermal – ISM: jets and outflows – galaxies: ISM – stars: supernovae: general – stars: supernovae: individual: SN 2003dh 1. Introduction very late phases. The light curve of the OA declined with an initial mean decay rate with α = −1.115 (Uemura et al. 2003). Color indices have been and still are widely used in the study The features of the type Ic SN 2003dh appeared in the spec- of many phenomena in astrophysics. Even quite recently the trum after about a week and strengthened later on (Stanek et al. use of broad-band colors has been advocated for identification 2003; Hjorth et al. 2003; Matheson et al. 2003; Lipkin et al. / of young type Ib c SN (Gal-Yam et al. 2004). For the study of 2004). The spectrum displayed large similarities to another optical afterglows (OAs) of GRBs this powerful method is only type Ic SN 1998bw, associated with GRB 980425 (Galama very rarely applied, therefore in this field it is still quite innova- et al. 1998). tive. Color indices enable us to resolve small variations of the In this letter, we apply the method of color indices to the profile of the spectra of the OAs from the measurements in the OA of GRB 030329 and show that it enables the separation of commonly used UBVRIJ filters. This method proved to be very the contributions of the individual emission mechanism, and useful for the analysis of the common properties of the OAs the tracing of the evolution of SN 2003dh in later phases of (Šimon et al. 2001 and 2003a). It also allows us to constrain the event. We also show that this event has characteristics quite the properties of the local interstellar medium of GRBs inside similar to the ensemble of OAs analyzed by Šimon et al. (2001 their host galaxies. and 2003a). A preliminary version of this analysis was pre- The long, intense gamma-ray burst GRB 030329 with the sented by Šimon et al. (2003b). duration of 50 s was discovered by HETE-II on March 29, 2003 (Vanderspek et al. 2003). An exceptionally bright OA 2. Sources of the data and data analysis (∼13 mag(R)) was discovered at t − T0 ≈ 1.25 h (Peterson & Price 2003; Price et al. 2003), which enabled investigators The bulk of the data used for this analysis comes from the to promptly determine the redshift z = 0.168 (Greiner et al. papers by Lipkin et al. (2004) and Matheson et al. (2003). 2003a; Hjorth et al. 2003) and to follow the light evolution to These observations were supplemented by the data provided by Article published by EDP Sciences and available at http://www.aanda.org or http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20041548 902 V. Šimon et al.: Color evolution of the OA of GRB 030329 the case of a centroid or a bin. The resulting standard devia- tions of the indices lie within 0.02–0.14 mag and are displayed in the figures. The Galactic reddening toward GRB 030329 is only EB−V = 0.02 mag according to Schlegel et al. (1998), and smaller than the standard deviations of the indices, it therefore could be neglected for our purposes. Also any light contribution of the host galaxy was quite small (upper limit R ≈ 23.1mag) (Blake & Bloom 2003) and could be neglected. Indeed, there is no flattening in the late phase of the resulting light curves (Fig. 1) which could be attributed to the contribution of the host galaxy. The color indices throughout this paper are in the ob- server frame to allow a comparison with the papers by Šimon et al. (2001 and 2003a). The time evolution of the color indices during the whole event is displayed in Fig. 2. For comparison, also the mean colors with the standard deviation of the ensemble of 25 OAs Fig. 1. The light curves of the OA of GRB 030329 in the individual (t − T0 < 10 days) (Šimon et al. 2003a), are shown. They were passbands. The whole R band light curve is displayed to show the time recalculated, here without including the OA of GRB 030329, evolution of the brightness while for other filters only those (usually but this hardly altered them. The OAs of the following GRBs averaged) points which were used for the calculation of the color in- were used: 970228, 970508, 971214, 980519, 980613, 980703, dices are plotted. Error bars are included but they are usually smaller 990123, 990308, 990510, 990712, 991208, 991216, 000301C, than the symbols used. In densely covered intervals the points are con- 000911, 000926, 010222, 010921, 011121, 011211, 020405, nected by lines for convenience. (This figure is available in color in 020813, 021004, 021211, 030226, 030418. We note that the electronic form.) analyses by Šimon et al. (2001 and 2003a) were restricted to t − T0 < 10 days due to practical reasons, since for most OAs Lamb et al. (2003), Zharikov et al. (2003a,b), Ibrahimov et al. the data for later epochs are sparse, with large uncertainties (2003a,b), Bikmaev et al. (2003), Gorosabel et al. (2003). and mostly only in the R filter. The detail of the dramatic color The light curves with the dense coverage (BVRI)were changes during the late phase of the OA of GRB 030329 can be binned into the segments of 0.015 days in the early phase of the seen in Fig. 3. The rapid large reddening occurs first in B − V, OA (t − T0 < 0.6 days) while the bins of 0.025 days were used then V − R, and finally in R − I. The well defined profiles of for 0.6 days < t − T0 < 0.95 days. The very densely covered the time evolution of the indices also imply that the paths in the R band light curve served as an indicator of the rapid changes color-color diagrams (Figs. 4 and 5) are real. on the time scale of hours in the early phase of the OA. This We generated synthetic color indices of SN 1998bw using enabled us to choose the intervals free of rapid changes; a reli- the code at http://wise-obs.tau.ac.il/∼dovip/typing able interpolation between the neighbouring measurements in (Poznanski et al. 2002), with both the wavelengths of the pass- the segments or filters where the coverage was sparser (within bands and t − T0 scaled to z = 0.168, with T0 referring less than an hour in the first few days after the GRB, and within to the time of GRB 980425. The maximum of brightness of a night in the late phases) was thus possible. For later times, a SN 1998bw occurred at t − T0 ≈ 18 days for z = 0.168. The centroid was often calculated from a group of closely spaced indices of SN 1998bw inside a similar interval of t − T0 as that data (less than 1.5–2 h apart for 1.6 days < t−T0 < 13 days; less covered for the OA of GRB 030329 are included in Figs. 2, 4 than one day apart for t − T0 > 21 days) in a given filter – this and 5. We also generated the colors of type Ic SN 2002ap and enabled us to achieve a higher accuracy of the brightness. The the group of type Ic SNe in the same way, and their time evo- reliability of the measurements from the GCN Circulars was lution is shown in Fig.