Hubble Space Telescope observations of the afterglow, supernova and host galaxy associated with the extremely bright GRB 130427A

TL;DR

This paper reports Hubble Space Telescope observations of the exceptionally bright GRB 130427A, analyzing its afterglow, supernova, and host galaxy to understand the nature of extremely luminous gamma-ray bursts and their progenitors.

Contribution

It provides detailed spectral and imaging analysis of the supernova and host galaxy associated with the most luminous GRB, revealing similarities across a wide energy range.

Findings

Supernova SN 2013cq has spectral shape and luminosity similar to SN 1998bw.

The GRB occurred ~4 kpc from the nucleus of a star-forming galaxy.

Progenitor stars for GRBs can be similar across six orders of magnitude in energy.

Abstract

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of the exceptionally bright and luminous Swift gamma-ray burst, GRB 130427A. At z=0.34 this burst affords an excellent opportunity to study the supernova and host galaxy associated with an intrinsically extremely luminous burst ($E_{iso} >10^{54}$ erg): more luminous than any previous GRB with a spectroscopically associated supernova. We use the combination of the image quality, UV capability and and invariant PSF of HST to provide the best possible separation of the afterglow, host and supernova contributions to the observed light ~17 rest-frame days after the burst utilising a host subtraction spectrum obtained 1 year later. Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) grism observations show that the associated supernova, SN~2013cq, has an overall spectral shape and luminosity similar to SN 1998bw (with a photospheric velocity, v$_{ph}$ ~15,000 km/s). The positions of the bluer features are better matched by the higher velocity SN~2010bh (v$_{ph}$ ~ 30,000 km/s), but SN 2010bh is significantly fainter, and fails to reproduce the overall spectral shape, perhaps indicative of velocity structure in the ejecta. We find that the burst originated ~4 kpc from the nucleus of a moderately star forming (1 Msol/yr), possibly interacting disc galaxy. The absolute magnitude, physical size and morphology of this galaxy, as well as the location of the GRB within it are also strikingly similar to those of GRB980425/SN 1998bw. The similarity of supernovae and environment from both the most luminous and least luminous GRBs suggests broadly similar progenitor stars can create GRBs across six orders of magnitude in isotropic energy.