Landing page for project GS046

Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous explosions in the Universe, visible out to cosmological redshifts. While it is universally accepted that LGRBs are highly-collimated jets from rare massive-star explosions (broad-lined Ic supernovae; Ic-BL SNe) viewed on-axis, the critical prediction of this model - that there should be a large number of off-axis jets accompanied by Ic-BL SNe - has never been borne out observationally. Years after the explosion, the off-axis jet will have decelerated and become spherical, resulting in a late-rising radio light curve, making radio observations ideal for detecting such jets. The detection of an off-axis LGRB would have wide-ranging implications, from star-formation rates to neutron star mergers. Here, we propose to observe PTF10tqv, a Ic-BL SN with prior radio detections, which was discovered in a radio campaign following a sample of Ic-BL that have indistinguishable host properties to GRBs. Our proposed C-band observations will measure the source size, which we can compare to predictions from hydrodynamical simulations of off-axis jets. VLBI observations are the best way to confirm the off-axis jet model and rule out alternative emission mechanisms.

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197