Twenty-six years after the explosion, we conducted a molecular line survey for supernova 1987A, using the ALMA observatory. The detection of molecules in the ejecta can uncover evidence of mixing and dynamics in the early days after the supernova explosion, as well as of molecular chemistry that took place in the last 25 years.

It is still not well understood to what extent the macroscopic mixing occurred after the supernova explosion. Molecules can provide a new tool to probe and test the extent of mixing: macroscopic mixings stir the elements from different layers of nuclear-reaction zones in the stellar core, opening the possibilities to form molecules that were composed of elements from different nuclear-burning zones, which the ALMA can detect. Additionally, the ALMA measured the line profiles of molecules, which unveiled the dynamics of ejecta. The high sensitivity observations of molecules can open a new window to determine SN explosion mechanisms and allow us to probe macroscopic mixing after the explosion.

We present photometry and spectroscopy of SN 2011kl associated to GRB 111209A. Peculiarities arise from both the ultra-long GRB and the very luminous SN, brighter than any other GRB-associated SN observed to date. We present unequivocal evidence in favor of a scenario where a newly-formed magnetar powers both the GRB and the SN.

Athena is the second large mission selected in the ESA Cosmic Vision plan. With its large collecting area, high spectral-energy resolution (X-IFU instrument) and impressive grasp (WFI instrument), Athena will truly revolutionise X-ray astronomy. The most prodigious sources of high-energy photons are often transitory in nature. Athena will provide the sensitivity and spectral resolution coupled with rapid response to enable the study of the dynamic sky. Potential sources include: distant Gamma-Ray Bursts to probe the reionisation epoch and find missing baryons in the cosmic web; tidal disruption events to reveal dormant supermassive and intermediate-mass black holes; and supernova explosions to understand progenitors and their environments. We illustrate Athenas capabilities and show how it will be able to constrain the nature of explosive transients including gas metallicity and dynamics.

Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) provide a unique way of selecting a sample of actively star-forming galaxies independent of their brightness and at practically any redshift. I will review what we know about the hosts and more immediate environments of LGRBs from two different perspectives: ultraviolet absorption-line spectroscopy of the bright early afterglow, and observations of their hosts in emission once the afterglow has faded away.

We reviewed chemical evolution of galaxies using our cosmological simulations.

I will describe the Swift Host Galaxy Legacy Survey (SHOALS), a comprehensive multiwavelengthprogram to characterize the demographics of the GRB host population and its redshift evolution from z=0 to z=7.Using unbiased selection criteria we have designated a subset of 119 Swift gamma-ray bursts which are now beingtargeted with intensive observational follow-up. Deep Spitzer imaging of every field has already been obtained andanalyzed, with major programs ongoing at Keck, GTC, Gemini, VLT, and Magellan to obtain complementaryoptical/NIR photometry and spectroscopy to enable full SED modeling and derivation of fundamental physicalparameters such as mass, extinction, and star-formation rate. Using these data I will present an unbiasedmeasurement of the GRB host-galaxy luminosity and mass distributions and their evolution with redshift, compareGRB hosts to other star-forming galaxy populations, and discuss implications for the nature of the GRB progenitor andthe ability of GRBs to serve as tools for measuring and studying cosmic star-formation in the distant universe.

Long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) are associated to the deaths of massive stars and could thus be used as a potentially powerful tool to trace cosmic star formation. However the conditions needed to produce a LGRBs may introduce a bias in the LGRB rate versus star formation rate (SFR) relation (called LGRB efficiency hereafter).

We have undertaken a study of the properties of the host galaxies of the BAT6 complete sample of LGRB to improve our knowledge on the LGRB efficiency, its redshift evolution, and the factor affecting it. This is the base to properly use LGRBs as SFR tracers.

We show that at z < 1 LGRBs are not direct SFR tracers because they tend to avoid high-metallicity galaxies. The use of the BAT6 complete sample keeps this result from being affected by possible biases that could have influenced past results based on incomplete samples. The preference for low (but not extremely low) metallicities can be a consequence of the particular conditions needed for the progenitor star to produce a GRB.

We aim at characterizing SN 2013dx, associated with GRB 130702A, and their environment, through ground-based observational campaigns in the optical-IR band. We infer a synthesized 56Ni mass of ~0.2 M⊙, a photospheric velocity of the ejected material declining from ~ 2.7 × 104 km s−1 at 8 rest frame days from the explosion, to ~ 3.5× 103 km s−1 at 40 days, a kinetic energy of ~ 35 × 1051 erg, an ejected mass of ~ 7 M⊙ and a progenitor mass of ~ 25-30 M⊙. We also find that the host belongs to a group of galaxies, an unprecedented finding for a GRB-associated SN and, to our knowledge, for long GRBs in general.

Since 2009 X-shooter has collected spectroscopy of over 80 gamma-ray burst afterglows with redshifts ranging from 0.05 to 6.3. Thanks to its efficiency, broad wavelength coverage (3,000 to 24,800 Å), and intermediate spectral resolution (R~8,000) it has become the most efficient tool for gamma-ray burst afterglow spectroscopy. In this Focus Meeting we presented the sample and some preliminary results of the analysis of absorption systems.

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) can be used as a powerful tool to study galactic environments at different epochs of the Universe's evolution, thanks to their bright afterglow emission ranging from X-rays to optical and radio wavebands. Important aspect of the environment is dust, which plays a central role in the astrophysical processes of interstellar medium and in the formation of stars. GRBs can be a unique probe of dust at cosmological distances, where its origin and properties are still poorly known. By using a sample of GRB afterglow spectra observed with the VLT/X-shooter spectrograph we studied the rest-frame extinction in GRB lines-of-sight by modelling the broadband near-infrared to X-ray afterglow spectral energy distributions. We present our results on the rest-frame extinction of our sample, and illustrate that the spectroscopic data, thanks to a combination of excellent resolution and coverage of the blue part of the spectral energy distributions, are more successful than photometric measurements in constraining the extinction curves and therefore the dust properties in GRB hosts.

We describe a method to identify GRB host galaxies by means of their chemical abundances. We apply this method to three GRB hosts by comparing detailed chemical evolution models, including dust, of galaxies of different morphological type to observed abundance ratios. We conclude that none of them is likely to be a dwarf irregular galaxy, as it is believed for the majority of GRB hosts, but rather two of them (GRB081008 and GRB120327A) are likely to be spirals and the third is likely to be an elliptical (GRB120815). In addition, we have derived their chemical ages: in particular, the elliptical host is only 15 Myr old, while the other two hosts are 50 Myr (GRB120327A) and 320 Myr (GRB130815).

The progenitors of stripped-envelope supernovae (SNe Ibc) remain to be conclsuively identified, but correlations between SN rates and host-galaxy properties can constrain progenitor models. Here, we present one result from a re-analysis of the rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search. Galaxies with stellar masses ≲1010 M⊙ are less efficient at producing SNe Ibc than more massive galaxies. Any progenitor scenario must seek to explain this new observation.

Superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) are an emerging class of SNe that exhibit luminosities exceeding those of SN Ia by an order of magnitude and have light curves with characteristic timescales of hundreds of days. Here we present observations of the host galaxies of 21 SLSNe observed with the Hubble Space Telescope, and show that their ultraviolet (UV) and near-infrared (nIR) luminosities and sizes and very different from those of the hosts of other core collapse events, with significant implications for their progenitors.

More than 60 GRBs at z ≳ 1.5 reside in the vicinity of dense, cold gas as probed by the measured neutral hydrogen via afterglow absorption spectroscopy. We present the largest sample of GRB-DLAs to date in comparison with a sample of DLAs along quasars: the metallicity of the GRB hosts represents a unique tool to understand if this particular subset of galaxies can be the key ingredient for GRB formation (and massive stars) at any redshift as well as the overall cosmic star-formation rate. We show that GRB-DLAs live in a metal enriched environment, especially at z ≳ 4, likely the result of recent intense star formation and/or SNe episodes. We also derive that our metallicity measurements are broadly consistent with a mild metallicity bias for the GRB formation.

We analyze a sample of 20 absorption systems intrinsic to long duration GRB host galaxies at z > 2 forwhich the metallicities are known. We compare the relation between the metallicity and cold gas velocity width for thissample to that of the Damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs) in the sight-lines of quasars (QSOs), and find completeagreement. We then compare the redshift evolution of the velocity-metallicity relation of our sample to that of QSODLAsand find that also GRB hosts favour a late onset of this evolution, around a redshift of ~2.6. We compute predicted stellar masses for the GRB host galaxies using the prescription determined from QSO-DLAsamples and compare the measured stellar masses for the four hosts where stellar masses have been determinedfrom SED fits. We find excellent agreement and conclude that, on basis of all available data and tests, long durationGRB-DLA hosts and intervening QSO-DLAs are consistent with being drawn from the same underlying population.

I will give an overview of the emission-line diagnostics used for star-forming galaxies. I will review the UV, optical, and IR diagnostics that can be used to yield information about the ISM conditions, star-formation properties, and power sources in GRB hosts, both globally, and with spatially-resolved data. I will discuss wide integral field spectroscopy and AO-led integral field spectroscopy on current and future telescopes, focusing on the insights to be gained on the properties of GRB sites.

We present here the last results we obtained on the spatial resolved analysis of the ionized gas of disk-dominated galaxies based on CALIFA data. CALIFA is an ongoing IFS survey of galaxies in the Local Univese (0.005 < z < 0.03) that has already obtained spectroscopic information up to ~2.5re with a spatial resolution better than ~1 kpc for a total number of an statiscal sample of galaxies of different morphological types, covering the CM-diagram up to Mr<−18 mag. With nearly 2000 spectra obtained for each galaxy, CALIFA offer one of the best IFU data to study the starformation histories and chemical enrichment of galaxies. In this article we focus on the main results based on the analysis of the oxygen abundances based on the study of ionized gas in H ii regions and individual spaxels, and their relations with the global properties of galaxies. In summary we have found that: (1) the $\mathcal{M}$-Z relation does not present a secondary relation with the star-formation rate, when the abundance is measured at the effective radius; (2) the oxygen abundance present a strong correlation with the stellar surface density (Σ-Z relation); (3) the oxygen abundance profiles present three well defined regimes, (a) an overall negative radial gradient, between 0.5-2 re, with a characteristic slope of αO/H∼-0.1 dex/re, (b) an universal flatenning beyond >2re and (c) an inner drop at <0.5re which presence depends on the mass. All these results indicates that disk-galaxies present an overall inside-out growth, although with clear deviations from this simple scenario.

The host galaxies of nearby (z<0.3) core-collapse supernovae and long-duration gamma-ray bursts offer an excellent means of probing the environments and populations that produce these events' varied massive progenitors. These same young stellar progenitors make LGRBs and SNe valuable and potentially powerful tracers of star formation, metallicity, the IMF, and the end phases of stellar evolution. However, properly utilizing these progenitors as tools requires a thorough understanding of their formation and, consequently, the physical properties of their parent host environments. In this talk I will review some of the recent work on LGRB and SN hosts with resolved environments that allows us to probe the precise explosion sites and surrounding environments of these events in incredible detail.

Stripped-envelope supernovae (SNe), i.e., those of Type Ib, Ic, and IIb, arise from massive progenitor stars which have had most or all of their outer hydrogen-rich layers removed before explosion by some process, either through a strong stellar wind or through binary mass transfer. The connection between some long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and broad-lined Type Ic SNe makes a broader discussion of stripped-envelope SNe and their environments particularly relevant. If the SN progenitor itself cannot be directly identified, it is possible that examination of its immediate environment can provide some insight into the nature of the progenitor. It is also possible that revisiting the SN site sufficiently late enough after explosion could reveal the presence of a binary companion. I will present high-spatial-resolution observations obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope of the sites and environments of stripped-envelope supernovae, and I will discuss the implications of the resulting analysis. I will include here, e.g., the environments of the recent SN 2011dh, SN 2012au, SN 2013df, SN 2013dk, and iPTF13bvn.

Dessart et al., demonstrated that type II supernova (SN II) model spectra present increasing metal line strength with increasing progenitor metallicity. To confront these models with observations, we obtained a large sample of SN II host H ii region emission line spectroscopy. We show that inferred SN II host H ii region metallicities have a statistically significant correlation with the strength of SN II metal lines, specifically Fe ii 5018Å.