• DOI:10.1088/0004-637X/805/2/164
• Corpus ID: 118228337

OPTICAL SYNCHROTRON PRECURSORS OF RADIO HYPERNOVAE

@article{Nakauchi2014OPTICALSP,
  title={OPTICAL SYNCHROTRON PRECURSORS OF RADIO HYPERNOVAE},
  author={Daisuke Nakauchi and Kazumi Kashiyama and Hiroki Nagakura and Yudai Suwa and Takashi Nakamura},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal},
  year={2014},
  volume={805},
  pages={164}
}

• D. Nakauchi, K. Kashiyama, +2 authors Takashi Nakamura
• Published 6 November 2014
• Physics
• The Astrophysical Journal

We examine the bright radio synchrotron counterparts of low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts and relativistic supernovae (SNe) and find that they can be powered by spherical hypernova (HN) explosions. Our results imply that radio-bright HNe are driven by relativistic jets that are choked deep inside the progenitor stars or quasi-spherical magnetized winds from fast-rotating magnetars. We also consider the optical synchrotron counterparts of radio-bright HNe and show that they can be observed as precursors several days before the SN peak with an r-band absolute magnitude of mag. While previous studies suggested that additional trans-relativistic components are required to power the bright radio emission, we find that they overestimated the energy budget of the trans-relativistic component by overlooking some factors related to the minimum energy of non-thermal electrons. If an additional trans-relativistic component exists, then a much brighter optical precursor with mag can be expected. Thus, the scenarios of radio-bright HNe can be distinguished by using optical precursors, which can be detectable from by current SN surveys like the Kiso SN Survey, Palomar Transient Factory, and Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System.