Browsing by Author "Arcavi, Iair"

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    Host Galaxies of Type Ic and Broad-lined Type Ic Supernovae from the Palomar Transient Factory: Implications for Jet Production
    (2020) Modjaz, Maryam; Bianco, Federica B.; Siwek, Magdalena; Huang, Shan; Perley, Daniel A.; Fierroz, David; Liu, Yu-Qian; Arcavi, Iair; Gal-Yam, Avishay; Filippenko, Alexei, V; Blagorodnova, Nadia; Cenko, Bradley S.; Kasliwal, Mansi; Kulkarni, Shri; Schulze, Steve; Taggart, Kirsty; Zhen, Weikang
    Unlike ordinary supernovae (SNe), some of which are hydrogen and helium deficient (called Type Ic SNe), broad-lined Type Ic SNe (SNe Ic-bl) are very energetic events, and only SNe Ic-bl are coincident with long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Understanding the progenitors of SN Ic-bl explosions versus those of their SN Ic cousins is key to understanding the SN-GRB relationship and jet production in massive stars. Here we present the largest existing set of host galaxy spectra of 28 SNe Ic and 14 SNe Ic-bl, all discovered by the same galaxy-untargeted survey, namely, the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). We carefully measure their gas-phase metallicities, stellar masses (M-*), and star formation rates (SFRs). We further reanalyze the hosts of 10 literature SN-GRBs using the same methods and compare them to our PTF SN hosts with the goal of constraining their progenitors from their local environments. We find that the metallicities, SFRs, and M-* values of our PTF SN Ic-bl hosts are statistically comparable to those of SN-GRBs but significantly lower than those of the PTF SNe Ic. The mass-metallicity relations as defined by the SNe Ic-bl and SN-GRBs are not significantly different from the same relations as defined by Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies, contradicting claims by earlier works. Our findings point toward low metallicity as a crucial ingredient for SN Ic-bl and SN-GRB production since we are able to break the degeneracy between high SFR and low metallicity. We suggest that the PTF SNe Ic-bl may have produced jets that were choked inside the star or were able to break out of the star as unseen low-luminosity or off-axis GRBs.
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    The Gravity Collective: A Search for the Electromagnetic Counterpart to the Neutron Star-Black Hole Merger GW190814
    (2021) Kilpatrick, Charles D.; Coulter, David A.; Arcavi, Iair; Brink, Thomas G.; Dimitriadis, Georgios; Filippenko, Alexei, V; Foley, Ryan J.; Howell, D. Andrew; Jones, David O.; Kasen, Daniel; Makler, Martin; Piro, Anthony L.; Rojas-Bravo, Cesar; Sand, David J.; Swift, Jonathan J.; Tucker, Douglas; Zheng, WeiKang; Allam, Sahar S.; Annis, James T.; Antilen, Juanita; Bachmann, Tristan G.; Bloom, Joshua S.; Bom, Clecio R.; Bostroem, K. Azalee; Brout, Dillon; Burke, Jamison; Butler, Robert E.; Butner, Melissa; Campillay, Abdo; Clever, Karoli E.; Conselice, Christopher J.; Cooke, Jeff; Dage, Kristen C.; de Carvalho, Reinaldo R.; de Jaeger, Thomas; Desai, Shantanu; Garcia, Alyssa; Garcia-Bellido, Juan; Gill, Mandeep S. S.; Girish, Nachiket; Hallakoun, Na'ama; Herner, Kenneth; Hiramatsu, Daichi; Holz, Daniel E.; Huber, Grace; Kawash, Adam M.; McCully, Curtis; Medallon, Sophia A.; Metzger, Brian D.; Modak, Shaunak; Morgan, Robert; Munoz, Ricardo R.; Munoz-Elgueta, Nahir; Murakami, Yukei S.; Felipe Olivares, E.; Palmese, Antonella; Patra, Kishore C.; Pereira, Maria E. S.; Pessi, Thallis L.; Pineda-Garcia, J.; Quirola-Vasquez, Jonathan; Ramirez-Ruiz, Enrico; Rembold, Sandro Barboza; Rest, Armin; Rodriguez, Osmar; Santana-Silva, Luidhy; Sherman, Nora F.; Siebert, Matthew R.; Smith, Carli; Smith, J. Allyn; Soares-Santos, Marcelle; Stacey, Holland; Stahl, Benjamin E.; Strader, Jay; Strasburger, Erika; Sunseri, James; Tinyanont, Samaporn; Tucker, Brad E.; Ulloa, Natalie; Valenti, Stefano; Vasylyev, Sergiy S.; Wiesner, Matthew P.; Zhang, Keto D.
    We present optical follow-up imaging obtained with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Nickel Telescope, Swope Telescope, and Thacher Telescope of the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave (GW) signal from the neutron star-black hole (NSBH) merger GW190814. We searched the GW190814 localization region (19 deg(2) for the 90th percentile best localization), covering a total of 51 deg(2) and 94.6% of the two-dimensional localization region. Analyzing the properties of 189 transients that we consider as candidate counterparts to the NSBH merger, including their localizations, discovery times from merger, optical spectra, likely host galaxy redshifts, and photometric evolution, we conclude that none of these objects are likely to be associated with GW190814. Based on this finding, we consider the likely optical properties of an electromagnetic counterpart to GW190814, including possible kilonovae and short gamma-ray burst afterglows. Using the joint limits from our follow-up imaging, we conclude that a counterpart with an r-band decline rate of 0.68 mag day(-1), similar to the kilonova AT 2017gfo, could peak at an absolute magnitude of at most -17.8 mag (50% confidence). Our data are not constraining for "red" kilonovae and rule out "blue" kilonovae with M > 0.5 M (circle dot) (30% confidence). We strongly rule out all known types of short gamma-ray burst afterglows with viewing angles <17 degrees assuming an initial jet opening angle of similar to 5.degrees 2 and explosion energies and circumburst densities similar to afterglows explored in the literature. Finally, we explore the possibility that GW190814 merged in the disk of an active galactic nucleus, of which we find four in the localization region, but we do not find any candidate counterparts among these sources.