1303.6961 (Edward P. J. van den Heuvel et al.)

Are Super-Luminous supernovae and Long GRBs produced exclusively in young dense star clusters?    [PDF]

Edward P. J. van den Heuvel, Simon Portegies Zwart

In the last few years new classes of extremely bright supernovae have been discovered, but their rates are so small that models either fail to produce any or dramatically over-produce the event rates. These super-luminal supernovae tend to occur almost exclusively is relatively low-mass galaxies that undergo active star formation. In the same type of galaxies another high energy phenomenon occurs, which are the long-duration gamma ray bursts, which are associated with another type of very energetic supernovae, the SN Ic-peculiar. We argue that both the super luminal supernovae and the long-duration GRBs are exclusive products of dynamical interactions and collisions in young dense star clusters, which are abundant in dwarf galaxies with active star formation. We present a model that explains how these different types of explosive events can be produced and show that this model can explain their observed rates. In our model the different types of super luminal supernovae and the long-duration gamma-ray bursts are related, in being a natural consequence of the dynamical evolution of dense star clusters.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6961