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Register a new userThe Afterglows of Swift-era Gamma-Ray Bursts. I. Comparing pre-Swift and Swift era Long/Soft (Type II) GRB Optical Afterglows
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David Alexander Kann
Publication date
2010
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We have gathered optical photometry data from the literature on a large sample of Swift-era gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows including GRBs up to September 2009, for a total of 76 GRBs, and present an additional three pre-Swift GRBs not included in an earlier sample. Furthermore, we publish 840 additional new photometry data points on a total of 42 GRB afterglows, including large data sets for GRBs 050319, 050408, 050802, 050820A, 050922C, 060418, 080413A and 080810. We analyzed the light curves of all GRBs in the sample and derived spectral energy distributions for the sample with the best data quality, allowing us to estimate the host galaxy extinction. We transformed the afterglow light curves into an extinction-corrected z=1 system and compared their luminosities with a sample of pre-Swift afterglows. The results of a former study, which showed that GRB afterglows clustered and exhibited a bimodal distribution in luminosity space, is weakened by the larger sample. We found that the luminosity distribution of the two afterglow samples (Swift-era and pre-Swift) are very similar, and that a subsample for which we were not able to estimate the extinction, which is fainter than the main sample, can be explained by assuming a moderate amount of line-of-sight host extinction. We derived bolometric isotropic energies for all GRBs in our sample, and found only a tentative correlation between the prompt energy release and the optical afterglow luminosity at one day after the GRB in the z=1 system. A comparative study of the optical luminosities of GRB afterglows with echelle spectra (which show a high number of foreground absorbing systems) and those without reveals no indication that the former are statistically significantly more luminous. (abridged)
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We use a large sample of GRB afterglow and prompt-emission data (adding further GRB afterglow observations in this work) to compare the optical afterglows (or the lack thereof) of Type I GRBs with those of Type II GRBs. In comparison to the afterglows of Type II GRBs, we find that those of Type I GRBs have a lower average luminosity and show an intrinsic spread of luminosities at least as wide. From late and deep upper limits on the optical transients, we establish limits on the maximum optical luminosity of any associated supernova, confirming older works and adding new results. We use deep upper limits on Type I GRB optical afterglows to constrain the parameter space of possible mini-SN emission associated with a compact-object merger. Using the prompt emission data, we search for correlations between the parameters of the prompt emission and the late optical afterglow luminosities. We find tentative correlations between the bolometric isotropic energy release and the optical afterglow luminosity at a fixed time after trigger (positive), and between the host offset and the luminosity (negative), but no significant correlation between the isotropic energy release and the duration of the GRBs. We also discuss three anomalous GRBs, GRB 060505, GRB 060614, and GRB 060121, in the light of their optical afterglow luminosities. (Abridged)
We present optical, near-IR, and radio follow up of sixteen Swift bursts, including our discovery of nine afterglows and a redshift determination for three. These observations, supplemented by data from the literature, provide an afterglow recovery rate of 60% in the optical/near-IR, much higher than in previous missions (BeppoSAX, HETE-2, INTEGRAL, and IPN). The optical/near-IR afterglows of Swift events are on average 1.7 mag fainter at t=12 hr than those of previous missions. The X-ray afterglows are similarly fainter compared to those of pre-Swift bursts. In the radio the limiting factor is the VLA threshold and the detection rate for Swift bursts is similar to that for past missions. The redshift distribution of pre-Swift bursts peaked at z~1, whereas the five Swift bursts with measured redshifts are distributed evenly between 1.3 and 3.2. From these results we conclude that (i) the pre-Swift distributions were biased in favor of bright events and low redshift events, (ii) the higher sensitivity and accurate positions of Swift result in a better representation of the true burst redshift and brightness distributions (which are higher and dimmer, respectively), and (iii) as many as 1/3 of the bursts can be optically dark, as a result of a high redshift and/or dust extinction. We remark that the apparent lack of low redshift, low luminosity Swift bursts, and the lower event rate compared to pre-launch estimates (90 vs. 150 per year), are the result of a threshold that is similar to that of BATSE. In view of these inferences, afterglow observers may find it advisable to make significant changes in follow up strategies of Swift events. [abridged]
We present a systematic temporal and spectral study of all Swift-XRT observations of GRB afterglows discovered between 2005 January and 2007 December. After constructing and fitting all light curves and spectra to power-law models, we classify the components of each afterglow in terms of the canonical X-ray afterglow and test them against the closure relations of the forward shock models for a variety of parameter combinations. The closure relations are used to identify potential jet breaks with characteristics including the uniform jet model with and without lateral spreading and energy injection, and a power-law structured jet model, all with a range of parameters. With this technique, we survey the X-ray afterglows with strong evidence for jet breaks (~12% of our sample), and reveal cases of potential jet breaks that do not appear plainly from the light curve alone (another ~30%), leading to insight into the missing jet break problem. Those X-ray light curves that do not show breaks or have breaks that are not consistent with one of the jet models are explored to place limits on the times of unseen jet breaks. The distribution of jet break times ranges from a few hours to a few weeks with a median of ~1 day, similar to what was found pre-Swift. On average Swift GRBs have lower isotropic equivalent gamma-ray energies, which in turn results in lower collimation corrected gamma-ray energies than those of pre-Swift GRBs. Finally, we explore the implications for GRB jet geometry and energetics.
The Swift XRT has been observing GRB afterglows since December 23, 2004. Three-quarters of these observations begin within 300 s of the burst onset, providing an unprecendented look at the behavior of X-ray emission from GRB afterglows in the first few hours after the burst. While most of the early afterglows have smoothly declining lightcurves, a substantial fraction has large X-ray flares on short time-scales. We suggest that these flares provide support for models with extended central engine activity producing late-time internal shocks.
We present optical and near-infrared (NIR) photometry of 28 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the textit{Swift} satellite and rapidly observed by the Reionization and Transients Infrared/Optical (RATIR) camera. We compare the optical flux at fiducial times of 5.5 and 11 hours after the high-energy trigger to that in the X-ray regime to quantify optical darkness. 46$pm$9 per cent (13/28) of all bursts in our sample and 55$pm$10 per cent (13/26) of long GRBs are optically dark, which is statistically consistently with previous studies. Fitting RATIR optical and NIR spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 19 GRBs, most (6/7) optically dark GRBs either occur at high-redshift ($z>4.5$) or have a high dust content in their host galaxies ($A_{rm V} > 0.3$). Performing K-S tests, we compare the RATIR sample to those previously presented in the literature, finding our distributions of redshift, optical darkness, host dust extinction and X-ray derived column density to be consistent. The one reported discrepancy is with host galaxy dust content in the BAT6 sample, which appears inconsistent with our sample and other previous literature. Comparing X-ray derived host galaxy hydrogen column densities to host galaxy dust extinction, we find that GRBs tend to occur in host galaxies with a higher metal-to-dust ratio than our own Galaxy, more akin to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Finally, to mitigate time evolution of optical darkness, we measure $beta_{rm OX,rest}$ at a fixed rest frame time, $t_{rm rest}=1.5$ hours and fixed rest frame energies in the X-ray and optical regimes. Choosing to evaluate optical flux at $lambda_{rm rest}=0.25~mu$m, we remove high-redshift as a source of optical darkness, demonstrating that optical darkness must result from either high-redshift, dust content in the host galaxy along the GRB sight line, or a combination of the two.
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