An Off‐Line Scan of the BATSE Daily Records and a Large Uniform Sample of Gamma‐Ray Bursts

Abstract

During a scan of the archival BATSE daily records covering the entire 9.1 yr (TJD 8369È11690) of the BATSE operation, 3906 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been detected. 2068 of these GRBs are previously known BATSE triggers, while 1838 of them are new nontriggered bursts. It is important that all events were detected in the same type of data and were processed with the same procedure. Therefore these 3906 GRBs constitute a uniform sample. We have created a publicly available electronic data base4 containing this sample. We describe the procedures of the data reduction, the selection of the GRB candidates, and the statistical tests for possible non-GRB contaminations. We also describe a novel test burst method used to measure the scan efficiency and the information obtained using the test bursts. Our scan decreases the BATSE detection threshold to D0.1 photon s~1 cm~2. As a Ðrst result, we show that the di †erential log NÈ log P distribution corrected for the detection efficiency extends to low brightnesses without any indication of a turnover. Any reasonable extrapolation of the new log NÈ log P to lower brightnesses imply a rate of several thousands of GRBs in the universe per year.

On the nature of X-ray flashes

“…The upper limit of 53.4 for LogĖ has been estimated from the requirement that the synthetic Log N − Log P relation agrees with the BATSE data (Stern et al 2001). The comparison is shown in Fig.…”

A Nontriggered Burst Supplement to the BATSE Gamma‐Ray Burst Catalogs

“…NOTE ADDED IN MANUSCRIPT.ÈSince this catalog was completed (1999 March) Stern et al (1999Stern et al ( , 2000aStern et al ( , 2000b published results of another search of the archival BATSE data for nontriggered GRBs. Their search uses o †-line trigger criteria that are nearly identical to those discussed in this paper.…”

“…Similarly, Stern et al (2000b) report that there are at least 90 conÐrmed GRBs listed in this catalog (Table 6) that are not included in their sample. This illustrates the limitations of burst recognition in both searches, and this uncertainty carries over into various catalogs of GRBs in the form of sample incompleteness and contamination by non-GRB transients.…”

“…Possible causes may include the di †erences in data reduction procedures for translating raw counts into physical peak Ñux units. The procedures described by Stern et al (2000b) make use of a more highly parameterized spectral form than the simple power-law used for this work. A detailed investigation of these discrepancies is beyond the scope of this paper.…”

Possible gamma-ray burst radio detections by the Square Kilometre Array. New perspectives

“…In addition, the complete table reported on line will make faster the searches for given GRBs. The following satellite missions and the associated catalogues have been taken into account: Agile by Galli, M. et al (2013);Pal'shin et al (2013); Longo, F. et al (2012); Hurley et al (2013), BeppoSAX by Frontera et al (2009), CGRO by Stern et al (2001); Kommers et al (2001);Schönfelder et al (2000) and the batsegrb catalogue Meegan et al 1996) in HEASARC web site 3 , Fermi with Paciesas et al (2012);von Kienlin et al (2014) and the fermigbrst catalogue in HEASARC archive 4 von Kienlin et al 2014;Goldstein et al 2012;Paciesas et al 2012), GRANAT, HETE-2, INTEGRAL by Minaev et al (2014); Bošnjak,Ž. et al (2014); Mereghetti (2013), Konus/Wind by Pal'shin et al (2013), Swift by Sakamoto et al (2011) and the "Swift GRB Table and Lookup" 5 ; ULYSSES by Hurley et al (1999).…”