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A long-duration gamma-ray burst of dynamical origin from the nucleus of an ancient galaxy

Nature Astronomy volume 7, pages 976–985 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The majority of long-duration (>2 s) gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) arise from the collapse of massive stars, with a small proportion created from the merger of compact objects. Most of these systems form via standard stellar evolution pathways. However, a fraction of GRBs may result from dynamical interactions in dense environments. These channels could also contribute substantially to the samples of compact object mergers detected as gravitational wave sources. Here we report the case of GRB 191019A, a long GRB (a duration of T90 = 64.4 ± 4.5 s), which we pinpoint close (⪅100 pc projected) to the nucleus of an ancient (>1 Gyr old) host galaxy at z = 0.248. The lack of evidence for star formation and deep limits on any supernova emission disfavour a massive star origin. The most likely route for progenitor formation is via dynamical interactions in the dense nucleus of the host. The progenitor, in this case, could be a compact object merger. These may form in dense nuclear clusters or originate in a gaseous disc around the supermassive black hole. Identifying, to the best of our knowledge, a first example of a dynamically produced GRB demonstrates the role that such bursts may have in probing dense environments and constraining dynamical fractions in gravitational wave populations.

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Fig. 1: The gamma-ray properties of GRB 191019A.
Fig. 2: Optical images of the afterglow of GRB 191019A and its host galaxy.
Fig. 3: The optical spectrum of the host galaxy of GRB 191019A as observed with the NOT.
Fig. 4: Comparison between the upper limits obtained from our targeted observations of GRB 191019A and the expectations of the light curve from supernovae or TDEs.

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Data availability

The majority of data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files). Gamma-ray and X-ray data from Swift may be downloaded from the UK Swift Science Data Centre at https://www.swift.ac.uk/. HST data are associated with programmes 16051 and 16458 and can be downloaded from https://archive.stsci.edu. Gemini data are associated with programmes GS-2019B-DD-106 and GS-2019B-FT-209 and can be retrieved from https://archive.gemini.edu. NOT data can be obtained via https://www.not.iac.es/observing/forms/fitsarchive/.

Code availability

The Prospector stellar population modelling code is available at https://github.com/bd-j/prospector. The IRAF and Python scripts necessary for HST data reduction can be obtained via astroconda and IRAF (including the relevant Gemini IRAF packages) from http://www.gemini.edu/observing/phase-iii/understanding-and-processing-data/data-processing-software/gemini-iraf-general.

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Acknowledgements

A.J.L., D.B.M. and N.R.T. are supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 725246). D.B.M. also acknowledges research grant 19054 from VILLUM FONDEN. M.N. and B.P.G. are supported by ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 948381). M.N. acknowledges a Turing Fellowship. The Fong Group at Northwestern acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation under grant nos. AST-1814782 and AST-1909358 and CAREER grant no. AST-2047919. W.F. gratefully acknowledges support by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. K.E.H. acknowledges support from the Carlsberg Foundation Reintegration Fellowship Grant CF21-0103. J.H. was supported by a VILLUM FONDEN Investigator grant (project number 16599). G.L. is supported by the UK Science Technology and Facilities Council grant ST/S000453/1. A.I. acknowledges the research programme Athena with project number 184.034.002, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). K.B. was supported by STScI HST General Observer Programmes 16548 and 16051 through a grant from STScI under National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contract NAS5-26555. The Cosmic Dawn Center is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under grant no. 140. G.F. acknowledges support from NASA Grant 80NSSC21K1722 and NSF Grant AST-2108624 at Northwestern University. I.M. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council through the Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), project number CE17010004, and through Future Fellowship FT190100574. This work is partly based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, under programmes 58-502 and 61-503, owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University, and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland and Norway, the University of Iceland and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. It is also based on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory (programme IDs GS-2019B-DD-106 and GS-2019B-FT-209), a programme of NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil) and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). The data were processed using the Gemini IRAF package and DRAGONS (Data Reduction for Astronomy from Gemini Observatory North and South). In addition, this study is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. These observations are associated with programme nos. 16051 and 16458. This work made use of data supplied by the UK Swift Science Data Centre at the University of Leicester. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) and the PS1 public science archive have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, We also thank Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Queen’s University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, NASA under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation Grant No. AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, Eotvos Lorand University, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The work is partly based on observations obtained as part of the VISTA Hemisphere Survey, ESO Progam, 179.A-2010 (PI: McMahon). We made use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by NASA.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

    Andrew J. Levan, Daniele B. Malesani, Anne Inkenhaag, Ashley A. Chrimes, Nicola Gaspari, Peter G. Jonker & Maria E. Ravasio

  2. Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Andrew J. Levan & Elizabeth R. Stanway

  3. Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Copenhagen, Denmark

    Daniele B. Malesani, Johan P. U. Fynbo & Kasper E. Heintz

  4. Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Daniele B. Malesani, Johan P. U. Fynbo & Kasper E. Heintz

  5. DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby-Taarbæk, Denmark

    Daniele B. Malesani

  6. Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Benjamin P. Gompertz, Matt Nicholl & Samantha R. Oates

  7. Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Anya E. Nugent, Jillian Rastinejad, Wen-fai Fong & Giacomo Fragione

  8. Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

    Daniel A. Perley & Gavin P. Lamb

  9. Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Brian D. Metzger

  10. Department of Physics and Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Brian D. Metzger

  11. Department of Physics, The Oskar Klein Center, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, Stockholm, Sweden

    Steve Schulze

  12. SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Leiden, the Netherlands

    Anne Inkenhaag & Peter G. Jonker

  13. Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie University, City of Ryde, New South Wales, Australia

    Tayyaba Zafar

  14. Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astrophotonics Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Tayyaba Zafar

  15. Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Granada, Spain

    J. Feliciano Agüí Fernández

  16. Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Kornpob Bhirombhakdi & Andrew S. Fruchter

  17. Université Côte D’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte D’Azur, CNRS, Artemis, Nice, France

    Antonio de Ugarte Postigo

  18. DARK, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Jens Hjorth

  19. Centre for Astrophysics and Cosmology, Science Institute, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Pall Jakobsson

  20. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Gavin P. Lamb & Nial R. Tanvir

  21. Monash Centre for Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Ilya Mandel

  22. OzGrav, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia

    Ilya Mandel

  23. Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Soheb Mandhai

  24. INAF, Astronomical Observatory of Brera, Merate (LC), Italy

    Maria E. Ravasio

  25. Department of Astronomy, The Oskar Klein Center, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jesper Sollerman

Authors
  1. Andrew J. Levan
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  2. Daniele B. Malesani
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  3. Benjamin P. Gompertz
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  4. Anya E. Nugent
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  5. Matt Nicholl
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  6. Samantha R. Oates
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  7. Daniel A. Perley
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  8. Jillian Rastinejad
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  10. Steve Schulze
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  14. J. Feliciano Agüí Fernández
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  15. Ashley A. Chrimes
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  20. Giacomo Fragione
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  30. Maria E. Ravasio
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  31. Jesper Sollerman
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  32. Nial R. Tanvir
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Contributions

A.J.L. obtained, reduced and analysed observations and wrote the text. D.B.M. obtained and reduced the NOT observations, performed subtractions and photometry and contributed to analysis and interpretation. B.P.G. undertook the Swift BAT and XRT analyses and contributed to analysis and interpretation. A.E.N. performed analysis of the host galaxy with Prospector. M.N. contributed to the light curve, TDE sections and spectral analysis. S.R.O. analysed the UVOT data. D.A.P. contributed to the NOT observations and interpretation. J.R. worked with the Gemini observations, photometry and subtractions. B.D.M. contributed to the theoretical discussion and interpretation. S.S. provided the comparison between the X-ray/gamma-ray light curves of GRB 191019A and other bursts. E.R.S. worked on population modelling of the host galaxy. A.I. performed the fit of the spectrum with pPXF. A.A.C. investigated the host population and contributed to interpretation. K.B. and A.F. worked on the HST observations and provided comments. A.d.U.P. worked on the NOT observations and commented on the text. W.F. worked on the interpretation. G.F. provided theoretical interpretation. J.P.U.F. led the first NOT observations and provided comments. N.G. worked on the offset implications. K.E.H. worked on the NOT data and interpretation. J.H. worked on interpretation and text. P.G.J. worked on the interpretation, in particular, with regard to TDE possibilities. G.L. worked on the interpretation and I.M. provided theoretical input. J.S. and P.J. worked on the NOT data and provided comments. N.R.T. was involved in the NOT, Gemini and HST observations.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew J. Levan.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Discussion, Figs. 1–6 and Tables 1–3.

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Levan, A.J., Malesani, D.B., Gompertz, B.P. et al. A long-duration gamma-ray burst of dynamical origin from the nucleus of an ancient galaxy. Nat Astron 7, 976–985 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-01998-8

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