The Progenitor Stars of Gamma‐Ray Bursts

Those massive stars that, during their deaths, give rise to gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) must be endowed with an unusually large amount of angular momentum in their inner regions, one to two orders of magnitude greater than the ones that make common pulsars. Yet the inclusion of mass loss and angular momentum transport by magnetic torques during the precollapse evolution is known to sap the core of the necessary rotation. Here we explore the evolution of very rapidly rotating, massive stars, including stripped down helium cores that might result from mergers or mass transfer in a binary, and single stars that rotate unusually rapidly on the main sequence. For the highest possible rotation rates (about 400 km/s), a…