Stellar forensics with the supernova-GRB connection, Astronomische Nachrichten 332

Key words supernovae, gamma-ray bursts Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and Type Ib/c Supernovae (SNe Ib/c) are amongst nature’s most magnificent ex-plosions. While GRBs launch relativistic jets, SNe Ib/c are core-collapse explosions whose progenitors have been stripped of their hydrogen and helium envelopes. Yet for over a decade, one of the key outstanding questions is which conditions lead to each kind of explosion and death in massive stars. Determining the fates of massive stars is not only a vibrant topic in itself, but also impacts using GRBs as star formation indicators over distances of up to 13 billion light-years and for mapping the chemical enrichment history of the universe. This article reviews a number of comprehensive observational studies that probe the progenitor environments, their metallicities and the explosion geometries of SN with and with-out GRBs, as well as the emerging field of SN environmental studies. Furthermore, it discusses SN 2008D/XRT 080109 which was discovered serendipitously with the Swift satellite via its X-ray emission from shock breakout, and which has generated great interest amongst both observers and theorists while illustrating a novel technique for stellar forensics. The article concludes with an outlook on how the most promising venues of research- with the many existing and upcoming large-scale surveys such as the Palomar Transient Factory and LSST- will shed new light on the diverse deaths of massive stars