We present the results of a study by Dessart et al. (2012), where we performed stellar collapse simulations of proposed long-duration γ-ray burst (LGRB) progenitor models and assessed the prospects for black hole formation. We find that many of the proposed LGRB candidates in Woosley & Heger (2006) have core structures similar to garden-variety core-collapse supernova progenitors and thus are not expected to form black holes, which is a key ingredient of the collapsar model of LGRBs. The small fraction of proposed progenitors that are compact enough to form black holes have fast rotating iron cores, making them prone to a magneto-rotational explosion and the formation of a proto-magnetar rather than a black hole. This leads us to our take-home message, that one must consider the iron-core structure (eg. ρ(r), Ω(r)) of evolved massive stars before making assumptions on the central engine of LGRBs.

We report on the type-Ic SN 2010bh associated with XRF 100316D at z = 0.059, which is among the latest spectroscopically confirmed GRB-SNe (Bufano et al. 2012). This supernova proves to be the most rapidly evolving GRB-SN to date.

We perform hydrodynamical simulations of core collapse supernovae (CCSNe) with a cylindrically-symmetrical numerical code (FLASH) to study the inflation of bubbles and the initiation of the explosion within the frame of the jittering-jets model. We study the typical time-scale of the model and compare it to the typical time-scale of the delayed neutrino mechanism. Our analysis shows that the explosion energy of the delayed neutrino mechanism is an order of magnitude less than the required 1051 erg.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) generate an afterglow with an emission peaking in the millimetre and submillimeter (mm/submm) range during the first hours to days, making the study in these wavelengths of great importance. Here we give an overview of the data that has been collected for GRB observations in this wavelengths until September 2011. The total sample includes 102 GRBs, of which 88 have afterglow observations, and the rest are only host galaxy searches. The 22 detections cover the redshift range between 0.168 and 8.2 and have peak luminosities that span 2.5 orders of magnitude. With the start of the operations at ALMA, the sensitivity with respect to previous facilities has already improved by over an order of magnitude. We estimate that, once completed, ALMA will be able to detect ~98 % of the afterglows.

This proceeding is based on the work published by de Ugarte Postigo et al. (2012).

We present early time (~0-50 days) bolometric light curves of UV-bright Core Collapse Supernovae observed with the Swift UV/Optical Telescope. We also generate pseudo-bolometric light curves from Swift UV and optical data and examine these by subtype as well as the observed and interpolated UV and IR flux contributions by epoch and bolometric corrections at early times from UV data.

Several claims have been put forward that an essential fraction of long-duration BATSE gamma-ray bursts should lie at redshifts larger than 5. This point-of-view follows from the natural assumption that fainter objects should, on average, lie at larger redshifts. However, redshifts larger than 5 are rare for bursts observed by Swift. The purpose of this article is to show that the most distant bursts in general need not be the faintest ones. We derive the cosmological relationships between the observed and emitted quantities, and arrive at a prediction that is tested on the ensembles of BATSE, Swift and Fermi bursts. This analysis is independent on the assumed cosmology, on the observational biases, as well as on any gamma-ray burst model. We arrive to the conclusion that apparently fainter bursts need not, in general, lie at large redshifts. Such a behaviour is possible, when the luminosities (or emitted energies) in a sample of bursts increase more than the dimming of the observed values with redshift. In such a case dP(z)/dz > 0 can hold, where P(z) is either the peak-flux or the fluence. This also means that the hundreds of faint, long-duration BATSE bursts need not lie at high redshifts, and that the observed redshift distribution of long Swift bursts might actually represent the actual distribution.

We review the results of very early phase optical follow-up observations of recent gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with the multi-color optical telescopes “MITSuME”. The MITSuME telescopes were designed to perform “real time” and “automatic” follow-up observations prompted by the GCN alerts via the Internet. The rapidly slewing equatorial mounts allow MITSuME to start photometric observations within 100 seconds after the trigger for several GRBs. In particular, we detected a brightening just after the trigger for two GRBs. These phenomena could be interpreted as the “on-set” of afterglow. In this paper we summarize these optical observations with a brief interpretation.

Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the most energetic particles flying from space and their source is not clarified yet. Recently, the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) suggests that UHECRs involve heavy nuclei. The PAO results require that a considerable fraction of metal nuclei must exist in the accelerating site, which can be realized only in the stellar interior. This puts strong constraints on the origin of UHECRs. In order to definitize the constraints from PAO results, we investigate the fraction of metal nuclei in a relativistic jet in gamma-ray burst associated with core-collapse supernova. If the jet is initially dominated by radiation field, quasi-statistical equilibrium (QSE) is established and heavy nuclei are dissociated to light particles such as 4He during the acceleration and expansion. On the other hand, if the jet is mainly accelerated by magnetic field heavy or intermediate mass nuclei can survive. The criterion to contain the metal nuclei is that the temperature at the launch site is below 4.5 × 109K. Therefore, if the composition of UHECRs is dominated by metal nuclei, a GRB with the magnetized jet is the most plausible candidate of the accelerating site.

During the late stages of stellar evolution in massive stars (carbon fusion and later), the fusion and neutrino luminosities in the core of the star exceed the Eddington luminosity. This can drive vigorous convective motions which in turn excite a super-Eddington flux in internal gravity waves. We show that an interesting fraction of the energy in excited gravity waves can, in some cases, convert into sound waves as the gravity waves propagate (tunnel) towards the stellar surface. The subsequent dissipation of the sound waves can unbind up to several M⊙ of the stellar envelope. This wave-driven mass loss can explain the existence of extremely large stellar mass loss rates just prior to core-collapse, which are inferred via circumstellar interaction in some core-collapse supernovae (e.g., SNe 2006gy and PTF 09uj).

We present the results of over two decades of radio observations of type IIb Supernovae with the Very Large Array and the Australia Telescope Compact Array. These radio studies illustrate the need for multi-wavelength follow-up to determine the progenitor scenario for type IIb events.

We develop a new numerical code of the multi-energy and multi-angle neutrino-radiation transfer in three dimensions (3D) for core-collapse supernovae. Our 3D code to solve the Boltzmann equations is based on the discretized-ordinate (SN) method with a fully implicit differencing for time advance. A basic set of neutrino reactions is implemented in the collision terms together with a realistic equation of state. By following the time evolution of neutrino distributions in six dimensions (3 spatial and 3 momentum-space) by the 3D Boltzmann solver, we study the 3D feature of neutrino transfer for given background models of supernova cores in order to understand the explosion mechanism through neutrino heating in multi dimensions.

We present two-dimensional numerical simulations of core-collapse supernova including multi-energy neutrino radiative transfer. We aim to examine the influence of the equation of state (EOS) for the dense nuclear matter. We employ four sets of EOSs, namely, those by Lattimer and Swesty (LS) and Shen et al., which became standard EOSs in the core-collapse supernova community. We reconfirm that not every EOS produces an explosion in spherical symmetry, which is consistent with previous works. In two-dimensional simulations, we find that the structure of the accretion flow is significantly different between LS EOS and Shen EOS, inducing an even qualitatively different evolution of the shock wave, namely, the LS EOS leads to shock propagation beyond 2000 km from the center, while the Shen EOS shows only oscillations within 500 km. The possible origins of the difference are discussed.

We present luminosity and temperature light curves following supernova shock breakouts through a thick wind. These events are very luminous and their spectrum may contain both an X-ray and a UV/optical component. For breakout pulse durations between a week and a month, the X-ray component luminosity peaks 100-500 days after the explosion, respectively.

We present detailed analysis of mid-infrared (MIR) data for 9 type II-P supernovae from the public Spitzer database. Spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from observed fluxes are fitted with simple models to get basic information about the dust as the presumed source of MIR radiation. We found two SNe, 2005ad and 2005af, which likely have newly-formed dust in their environment, while in the other seven cases the observed MIR flux may originate from pre-existing circumstellar or interstellar dust.

We studied optical and near-infrared (NIR) light curves, and optical spectra of Supernovae (SNe) 2006V and 2006au, two objects monitored by the Carnegie Supernova Project (CSP) and displaying remarkable similarity to SN 1987A, although they were brighter, bluer and with higher expansion velocities. SN 2006au also shows an initial dip in the light curve, which we have interpreted as the cooling tail of the shock break-out. By fitting semi-analytic models to the UVOIR light curve of each object, we derive the physical properties of the progenitors and we conclude that SNe 2006V and 2006au were most likely Blue Supergiant (BSG) stars that exploded with larger energies as compared to that of SN 1987A. We are currently investigating the host galaxies of a few BSG SNe, in order to understand the role played by the metallicity in the production of these rare exploding BSG stars.

The efficiency of the energy conversion rate in the relativistic magnetic reconnection is investigated by means of Relativistic Resistive Magnetohydrodynamic (R2MHD) simulations. We confirmed that the simple Sweet-Parker type magnetic reconnection is a slow process for the energy conversion as theoretically predicted by Lyubarsky (2005). After the Sweet-Parker regime, we found a growth of the secondary tearing instability in the elongated current sheet. Then the energy conversion rate and the outflow velocity of reconnection jet increase rapidly. Such a rapid energy conversion would explain the time variations observed in many astrophysical flaring events.

To construct a more realistic model of relativistic reconnection, we extend our R2MHD code to R3MHD code by including the radiation effects (Relativistic Resistive Radiation Magnetohydrodynamics R3MHD). The radiation field is described by the 0th and 1st moments of the radiation intensity (Farris et al. 2008, Shibata et al. 2011). The code has already passed some one-dimensional and multi-dimensional numerical problems. We demonstrate the first results of magnetic reconnection in the radiation dominated current sheet.

We calculate the evolution of stars with their initial mass of 9-11M⊙ under very fine initial mass grid of 0.01M⊙. We determine the lower critical mass for Ne ignition in an ONe core that has not undergone the thermal pulse episode. The values are 9.83M⊙ for the initial mass and 1.365M⊙ for the CO core mass. A star with an initial mass slightly larger than the critical, undergoes an off-center Ne+O ignition. Since the energy production rate of Ne+O burning and lasting electron capture reactions is sufficiently large to ignite Si, an Fe core forms as a result of shell Si burning. For a star just below the critical mass, an ONe core continues to contract. In such a high density core, electron capture by nuclei produced through C burning affects the core evolution. After 20Ne starts to capture electrons, the core may ignite O and undergo O detonation. The fate may be an Electron Capture Supernova.

We have performed three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamical simulations of core-collapse supernovae (SNe) with multigroup neutrino transport to study non-axisymmetric effects in the context of neutrino heating explosion mechanism. By comparing one- (1D) and two dimensional (2D) results with those of 3D, we study how the increasing spatial multi-dimensionality affects the postbounce SN dynamics. The calculations were performed with an energy-dependent treatment of the neutrino transport that is solved by the isotropic diffusion source approximation scheme. In agreement with previous studies, our 1D model does not produce explosions for the 11.2 M⊙ star, while the neutrino-driven revival of the stalled bounce shock is obtained both in the 2D and 3D models. Our results show that convective matter motions below the gain radius become much more violent in 3D than 2D, making the neutrino luminosity larger for 3D. Enhanced by the large neutrino luminosity, the shock of the 3D model expands faster than that of the 2D. Our results show that the evolution of the shock is sensitive to the employed numerical resolutions. To draw a robust conclusion, 3D simulations with much higher numerical resolution and more advanced treatment of neutrino transport and gravity is needed.

An observational study is presented of the spectral evolution of gamma-ray burst (GRB) prompt emissions with the Suzaku Wide-band All-sky Monitor (WAM). We selected 6 bright GRBs exhibiting 7 well-separated fast-rise-exponential-decay (FRED) shaped light curves to investigate spectral changes by evaluating exponential decay time constants of the energy-resolved light curves. In addition, we carried out time-resolved spectroscopy of two of them which were located with accuracy sufficient to evaluate the time-resolved spectra with precise energy response matrices. The two imply different emission mechanisms; the one is well reproduced with a cooling blackbody radiation model with a power-law component, while the other prefers non-thermal emission model with a decaying turn over energy.

Type II-plateau supernovae (SNe II-P) are fainter than Type Ia SNe and thus have so far been observed only at z < 1. We introduce shock breakout and propose a distant SN II-P survey at z > 1 with shock breakout. The first observation of shock breakout from the rising phase is reported in 2008. We first construct a theoretical model reproducing the UV-optical light curves (LCs) of the first example and demonstrate that the peak apparent g-band magnitude of the shock breakout would be mg ~ 26.4 mag if an identical SN occurs at a redshift z = 1, which can be reached by 8m-class telescopes. Furthermore, we present LCs of shock breakout of SN explosions with various main-sequence masses, metallicities, and explosion energies and derive the observable SN rate and reachable redshift as functions of filter and limiting magnitude by taking into account an initial mass function, cosmic star formation history, intergalactic absorption, and host galaxy extinction. The g-band observable SN rate with limiting magnitude 27.5 mag is 3.3 SNe deg−2 day−1 and half of them are located at z > 1.2.