The afterglow of GRB 050709 and the nature of the short-hard γ-ray bursts

Fox, D. B.; Frail, D. A.; Price, P. A.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Berger, E.; Piran, Tsvi; Söderberg, A. M.; Cenko, S. B.; Cameron, P. B.; Gal‐Yam, A.; Kasliwal, Mansi M.; Moon, D. S.; Harrison, Fiona A.; Nakar, Ehud; Schmidt, B. P.; Penprase, Bryan E.; Chevalier, Roger A.; Kumar, Pawan; Roth, Kathy; Watson, Derrick G.; Lee, B L; Shectman, Stephen; Phillips, M. M.; Roth, Markus; McCarthy, Patrick J.; Rauch, Michael; Cowie, L. L.; Peterson, Bruce A.; Rich, J.; Kawai, N.; Aoki, Kentaro; Kosugi, George; Totani, Tomonori; Hs, Park; MacFadyen, Andrew; Hurley, K.

doi:10.1038/nature04189

Cited by 485 publications

(529 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…While for long GRBs the stellar envelopes of the progenitor are expected to drive the release of energy into fairly highly collimated jets, numerical simulations of coalescing binary systems, that are thought to be among the progenitors of short bursts, predict a lower degree of collimation. Short burst jet opening angles estimated so far were obtained for GRB 051221A, angle of ∼4-8 degrees Soderberg et al 2006) based on multiwavelength observations (from radio to X-rays) and for GRB 050709, based however on few data points that provided a poorly constrained jet angle of about ∼15 degrees (Fox et al 2005; but see also Watson et al 2006). For GRB 050724, a jet angle of ∼8-12 degree was claimed from radio and NIR observations (Berger et al 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Fox et al 2005). Five short GRBs with no clear host galaxy association, but for which galaxies were detected within the XRT error circle, were claimed to reside at redshift above 0.7 and for these sources E iso ranges between 10 50 -10 52 erg (Berger et al 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Fox et al 2005;Burrows et al 2006;Soderberg et al 2006). Intrinsic spectral parameters such as the peak energy E p of the EF(E) spectrum of the burst and the equivalent isotropic energy E iso , do not match the E p − E iso correlation for long GRBs (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A study of the prompt and afterglow emission of the short GRB 061201

Stratta¹,

D’Avanzo

Piranomonte

et al. 2007

A&A

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Context. Our knowledge of the intrinsic properties of short duration Gamma-Ray Bursts has relied, so far, only upon a few cases for which the estimate of the distance and an extended, multiwavelength monitoring of the afterglow have been obtained. Aims. We carried out multiwavelength observations of the short GRB 061201 aimed at estimating its distance and studying its properties. Methods. We performed a spectral and timing analysis of the prompt and afterglow emission and discuss the results in the context of the standard fireball model. Results. A clear temporal break was observed in the X-ray light curve about 40 min after the burst trigger. We find that the spectral and timing behaviour of the X-ray afterglow is consistent with a jet origin of the observed break, although the optical data can not definitively confirm this and other scenarios are possible. No underlying host galaxy down to R ∼ 26 mag was found after fading of the optical afterglow. Thus, no secure redshift could be measured for this burst. The nearest galaxy is at z = 0.111 and shows evidence of star formation activity. We discuss the association of GRB 061201 with this galaxy and with the ACO S 995 galaxy cluster, from which the source is at an angular distance of 17 and 8.5 , respectively. We also test the association with a possible undetected, positionally consistent galaxy at z ∼ 1. In all these cases, in the jet interpretation, we find a jet opening angle of 1-2 degrees.Key words. gamma rays: bursts IntroductionShort duration Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are historically defined as those GRBs with burst duration less than two seconds and hard spectra (Kouveliotou et al. 1993). As the sample of short GRBs increases, in order to take into account all the spectral and temporal properties of the prompt emission, alternative empirical definitions of short GRBs have been introduced (e.g. Norris & Bonnell 2006;Zhang et al. 2007).The expected progenitor for short GRBs is a merging binary system of compact objects. However, our present knowledge of the intrinsic properties of short bursts mainly relies upon a few cases for which the distance could be derived and an extendedThe results reported in this paper are partially based on observations carried out at ESO telescopes under program 078.D-0809.INAF personnel resident at ASDC. multiwavelength monitoring of the afterglow was carried out.From these it appears that short bursts are less energetic and less collimated than long GRBs (e.g. Fox et al. 2005;Burrows et al. 2006;Soderberg et al. 2006). Intrinsic spectral parameters such as the peak energy E p of the EF(E) spectrum of the burst and the equivalent isotropic energy E iso , do not match the E p − E iso correlation for long GRBs (e.g. Amati 2007).The short bursts for which unambiguous hosts have been found are at redshifts between z = 0.10 and z = 0.55. The optical afterglows of seven short bursts and their likely host galaxies have been recently observed with telescopes such as ESO/VLT, Gemini, Magellan and HST, but no firm estimation of...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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A study of the prompt and afterglow emission of the short GRB 061201

Stratta¹,

D’Avanzo

Piranomonte

et al. 2007

A&A

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“…However, for a powerful GRB to be produced, these stars must be extremely small and dense, and these systems are probably rare. Following the successful detection of an X-ray afterglow from the short GRB 050509B came the detection of an optical afterglow for the short GRB 050709 (Fox et al 2005;Hjorth et al 2005b). The subarcsecond position of the optical afterglow led to successful identification of the host galaxy, lying at a distance zZ0.16.…”

Section: The Discovery Of Short Burst Afterglowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Swift satellite lives up to its name, revealing cosmic explosions as they happen

Starling

2008

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful objects in the Universe. Discovered in the 1960s as brief flashes of gamma radiation, we now know that they emit across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, are located in distant galaxies and comprise two distinct populations, one of which may originate in the deaths of massive stars. The launch of the Swift satellite in 2004 brought a flurry of new discoveries, advancing our understanding of these sources and the galaxies that host them. I highlight a number of important results from the Swift era thus far.

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“…Short GRBs are understood to be produced by highly -relativistic jets ejected during different processes, such as neutron star -neutron star (NS-NS) or black hole -neutron star (BH-NS) binary mergers (Narayan et al 1992;Fox et al 2005;Metzger et al 2008), whose averaged redshift distribution, in the Swift-era, seems to be z ∼ 1.0 (see e.g., Magliocchetti et al 2003;Tanvir et al 2005;and Ghirlanda et al 2006). Swift and HETE-2 observations have provided evidence of clear similarities with the afterglows detected in the correspondence of long GRBs, because of the detection of X-ray and optical afterglows (Soderberg 2006;Grupe 2006;Berger 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

z= 1 multifractality of Swift short GRBs?

Tamburini

2010

A&A

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Aims. We analyze and characterize the angular distribution of selected samples of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) from BATSE and Swift data to confirm that the division into two classes of short-and long-duration GRBs also correspond to two distinct spatial populations. Methods. The angular distribution is analyzed using multifractal analysis and characterized by a multifractal spectrum of dimensions. Different spectra of dimensions relate to different angular distributions.Results. The spectra of dimensions of short and long bursts indicate that the two populations indeed have two different angular distributions. Both Swift and BATSE long bursts appear to be homogeneously distributed across the sky with a monofractal distribution. In contrast, short GRBs follow a multifractal distribution for both the two samples. Even if BATSE data do not enable a unique interpretation of their angular distribution to be made because of the instrumental selection effects that mainly favor the detection of nearby GRBs, the results from Swift short GRBs confirm this behavior, also when including GRBs corrected by the redshift factor. The distributions traced by short GRBs, up to z = 1, depict a universe with a structure similar to that of a disordered porous material with uniformly distributed heterogeneous irregular structures, appearing more clustered than expected.

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The afterglow of GRB 050709 and the nature of the short-hard γ-ray bursts

Cited by 485 publications

References 37 publications

A study of the prompt and afterglow emission of the short GRB 061201

A study of the prompt and afterglow emission of the short GRB 061201

The Swift satellite lives up to its name, revealing cosmic explosions as they happen

z= 1 multifractality of Swift short GRBs?

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