Which massive stars are gamma-ray burst progenitors?

Abstract

The collapsar model for gamma-ray bursts requires three essential ingredients: a massive core, removal of the hydrogen envelope, and enough angular momentum in the core. We study current massive star evolution models of solar metallicity to determine which massive star physics is capable of producing these ingredients. In particular, we investigate the role of hydrodynamic and magnetic internal angular momentum transport and binary mass and angular momentum transfer. We follow the evolution of rotating single stars and of binary systems that include rotational processes for both stars. Neglecting magnetic fields, we show that the cores of massive single stars can maintain a high specific angular momentum when evolved with the assumption that mean molecular weight gradients suppress rotational mixing processes. In binary systems that undergo mass transfer during core hydrogen burning the mass receiving star accretes large amounts of high angular momentum material, leading to a spin-up of the core. We find, however, that this merely compensates for the tidal angular momentum loss due to spin-orbit coupling, which leads to synchronous rotation before the mass transfer event. Therefore the resulting cores do not rotate faster than in single stars. We also present models that include magnetic fields generated by differential rotation and we consider the internal angular momentum transport by magnetic torques. We investigate the capability of magnetic torques to efficiently pump angular momentum into the cores of accreting stars. Despite our finding that this mechanism works, the magnetic coupling of core and envelope after the accreting star ends core hydrogen burning leads to slower rotation than in the non-magnetic case.