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Radio emission from the unusual supernova 1998bw and its association with the γ-ray burst of 25 April 1998

Nature volume 395, pages 663–669 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

Data accumulated over the past year strongly favour the idea that γ-ray bursts lie at cosmological distances, although the nature of the power source remains unclear. Here we report radio observations of the supernova SN1998bw, which exploded at about the same time, and in about the same direction, as the γ-ray burst GRB980425. At its peak, the supernova was unusually luminous at radio wavelengths. A simple interpretation of the data requires that the source expanded with an apparent velocity of at least twice the speed of light, indicating that the supernova was accompanied by a shock wave moving at relativistic speeds (the ejects of supernovae are typically characterized by non-relativistic velocities). The energy of the shock is at least 1049 erg, with an inferred ejecta mass of 10−5 solar masses, and we suggest that the early phase of this shock wave produced the burst of γ-rays. Although in general the properties of supernovae are very different from those of γ-ray bursts, we argue that this unusual supernova establishes a second class of γ-ray burst, which is distinctly different from the cosmological kind.

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Figure 1: The position of objects within the 8-arcmin (radius) location error circle of the WFC for GRB980425 (ref.13).
Figure 2: The radio light curve and spectrum of SN1998bw.
Figure 3: The different regimes of interstellar scattering.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Avery and G. Moriarty-Schieven for help in making the JCMT observations. D.A.F. and S.R.K. thank M. Rupen, M. Rees and B. Paczynski for discussions. S.R.K. thanks A. Readhead for extensive discussions of brightness temperature. The Australia Telescope is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by The Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research council of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and the National Research Council of Canada. The VLA is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The research of S.R.K. and E.S.P. is supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Physics, Mathematics & Astronomy, Caltech 105-24, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    S. R. Kulkarni & J. S. Bloom

  2. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, PO Box 0, Socorro, 87801, New Mexico, USA

    D. A. Frail

  3. Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Locked Bag 194, Narrabri, 2390, New South Wales, Australia

    M. H. Wieringa, R. M. Wark & J. L. Higdon

  4. Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, PO Box 76, Epping, 1710, New South Wales, Australia

    R. D. Ekers

  5. School of Physics, University of Sydney, New South Wales, 2006, Australia

    E. M. Sadler

  6. Division of Physics, Mathematics & Astronomy, Caltech 130-33, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    E. S. Phinney

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  1. S. R. Kulkarni
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Correspondence to S. R. Kulkarni.

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Kulkarni, S., Frail, D., Wieringa, M. et al. Radio emission from the unusual supernova 1998bw and its association with the γ-ray burst of 25 April 1998. Nature 395, 663–669 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/27139

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