The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection

Understand

In this review we present a progress report of the connection between long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their accompanying supernovae (SNe).

• The analysis is from the point of view of an observer, with much of the emphasis placed on how observations, and the modelling of observations, have constrained what we known about GRB-SNe.
• We discuss their photometric and spectroscopic properties, their role as cosmological probes, including their measured luminosity$-$decline relationships, and how they can be used to measure the Hubble constant.
• We present a statistical analysis of their bolometric properties, and use this to determine the properties of the "average" GRB-SNe: which has a kinetic energy of $E_{\rm K} \approx 2.5\times10^{52}$ erg, an ejecta mass of $M_{\rm ej} \approx 6$ M$_{\odot}$, a nickel mass of $M_{\rm Ni} \approx 0.4$ M$_{\odot}$, a peak photospheric velocity of $v_{\rm ph} \approx 21,000$ km s$^{-1}$, a peak bolometric luminosity of $L_{\rm p} \approx 1\times10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$, and it reaches peak bolometric light in $t_{\rm p} \approx 13$ days.