Relativistic ejecta from XRF 060218 and the complete census of cosmic explosions
Abstract
Over the last decade, long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and X-ray flashes (XRFs) have been revealed to be a rare variety of Type Ibc supernova (SN). While all these events result from the death of massive stars, the electromagnetic luminosities of GRBs and XRFs exceed those of ordinary Type Ibc SNe by many orders of magnitude. The essential physical process that causes a dying star to produce a GRB or XRF, and not just an SN, remains the crucial open question. Here we present radio and X-ray observations of XRF 060218 (associated with SN 2006aj), the second nearest GRB identified to-date, which allow us to measure its total energy and place it in the larger context of cosmic explosions. We show that this event is 100 times less energetic but ten times more common than cosmological GRBs. Moreover, it is distinguished from ordinary Type Ibc SNe by the presence of 10^48 erg of mildly-relativistic ejecta, along with a central engine which produces X-rays for weeks after the explosion. This suggests that the presence of relativistic ejecta is the key physical distinction between GRBs/XRFs and ordinary SNe, while the nature of the central engine (black hole or magnetar) may distinguish cosmological GRBs from the low-luminosity and spherical events like XRF 060218.Keywords
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