• DOI:10.1086/311634
• Corpus ID: 2677824

On the Association of Gamma-Ray Bursts with Supernovae

@article{Kippen1998OnTA,
  title={On the Association of Gamma-Ray Bursts with Supernovae},
  author={R. Marc Kippen and M S Briggs and Jefferson Michael Kommers and Chryssa Kouveliotou and Kevin Hurley and Craig Richard Robinson and Jan van Paradijs and Dieter H. Hartmann and Titus J. Galama and Paul M. Vreeswijk},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal Letters},
  year={1998},
  volume={506},
  pages={L27 - L30}
}

• R. Kippen, M. Briggs, +7 authors P. Vreeswijk
• Published 27 June 1998
• Physics
• The Astrophysical Journal Letters

The recent discovery of a supernova (SN 1998bw) seemingly associated with GRB 980425 adds a new twist to the decades-old debate over the origin of gamma-ray bursts. To investigate the possibility that some (or all) bursts are associated with supernovae, we performed a systematic search for temporal/angular correlations using catalogs of BATSE and BATSE/Ulysses burst locations. We find no associations with any of the precise BATSE/Ulysses locations, which allows us to conclude that the fraction of high-fluence gamma-ray bursts from known supernovae is small (less than 0.2%). For the more numerous weaker bursts, the corresponding limiting fraction of 1.5% is less constraining due to the imprecise locations of these events. This limit (1.5%≃18 bursts) allows that a large fraction of the recent supernovae used as a comparison data set (18 supernovae ≃ 20%) could have associated gamma-ray bursts. Thus, although we find no significant evidence to support a burst/supernova association, the possibility cannot be excluded for weak bursts.