The circumstellar environment of Wolf-Rayet stars & Gamma-ray burst afterglows

Abstract

We study the evolution of the circumstellar medium of massive stars. We pay particular attention to Wolf-Rayet stars that are thought to be the progenitors of some long Gamma-Ray Bursts. We detail the mass-loss rates we use in our stellar evolution models and how we estimate the stellar wind speeds during different phases. With these details we simulate the interactions between the wind and the interstellar medium to predict the circumstellar environment around the stars at the time of core-collapse. We then investigate how the structure of the environment might affect the GRB afterglow. We find that when the afterglow jet encounters the free-wind to stalled-wind interface that rebrightening occurs and a bump is seen in the afterglow light curve. However our predicted positions of this interface are too distant from the site of the GRB to reach while the afterglow remains observable. The values of the final-wind density, A_{*}, from our stellar models are similar to the values inferred from observed afterglow lightcurves and those from observed Wolf-Rayet stars. However we do not reproduce the lowest observed A_{*} values below 0.3. For these cases we suggest that the progenitors could have been a WO type Wolf-Rayet star, be in a close binary or very low metallicity star. Finally we turn our attention to the matter of stellar wind material producing absorption lines in the afterglow spectra. We discuss the observational signatures of two Wolf-Rayet stellar types, WC and WO, in the afterglow lightcurve and spectra. We also indicate how it may be possible to constrain the initial mass and metallicity of a GRB progenitor by using the inferred wind density and wind velocity.