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Register a new userDust extinction bias in the column density distribution of gamma-ray bursts; high column density, low redshift GRBs are more heavily obscured
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Authors
Darach Watson
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The afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have more soft X-ray absorption than expected from the foreground gas column in the Galaxy. While the redshift of the absorption can in general not be constrained from current X-ray observations, it has been assumed that the absorption is due to metals in the host galaxy of the GRB. The large sample of X-ray afterglows and redshifts now available allows the construction of statistically meaningful distributions of the metal column densities. We construct such a sample and show, as found in previous studies, that the typical absorbing column density (N_HX) increases substantially with redshift, with few high column density objects found at low to moderate redshifts. We show, however, that when highly extinguished bursts are included in the sample, using redshifts from their host galaxies, high column density sources are also found at low to moderate redshift. We infer from individual objects in the sample and from observations of blazars, that the increase in column density with redshift is unlikely to be related to metals in the intergalactic medium or intervening absorbers. Instead we show that the origin of the apparent increase with redshift is primarily due to dust extinction bias: GRBs with high X-ray absorption column densities found at $zlesssim4$ typically have very high dust extinction column densities, while those found at the highest redshifts do not. It is unclear how such a strongly evolving N_HX/A_V ratio would arise, and based on current data, remains a puzzle.
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We remark on the utility of an observational relation between the absorption column density in excess of the Galactic absorption column density, $Delta N_{rm H} = N_{rm H, fit} - N_{rm H, gal}$, and redshift, z, determined from all 55 Swift-observed long bursts with spectroscopic redshifts as of 2006 December. The absorption column densities, $N_{rm H, fit}$, are determined from powerlaw fits to the X-ray spectra with the absorption column density left as a free parameter. We find that higher excess absorption column densities with $Delta N_{rm H} > 2times 10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$ are only present in bursts with redshifts z$<$2. Low absorption column densities with $Delta N_{rm H} < 1times 10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$ appear preferentially in high-redshift bursts. Our interpretation is that this relation between redshift and excess column density is an observational effect resulting from the shift of the source rest-frame energy range below 1 keV out of the XRT observable energy range for high redshift bursts. We found a clear anti-correlation between $Delta N_{rm H}$ and z that can be used to estimate the range of the maximum redshift of an afterglow. A critical application of our finding is that rapid X-ray observations can be used to optimize the instrumentation used for ground-based optical/NIR follow-up observations. Ground-based spectroscopic redshift measurements of as many bursts as possible are crucial for GRB science.
Sub-millimetre dust emission is an important tracer of density N of dense interstellar clouds. One has to combine surface brightness information at different spatial resolutions, and specific methods are needed to derive N at a resolution higher than the lowest resolution of the observations. Some methods have been discussed in the literature, including a method (in the following, method B) that constructs the N estimate in stages, where the smallest spatial scales being derived only use the shortest wavelength maps. We propose simple model fitting as a flexible way to estimate high-resolution column density maps. Our goal is to evaluate the accuracy of this procedure and to determine whether it is a viable alternative for making these maps. The new method consists of model maps of column density (or intensity at a reference wavelength) and colour temperature. The model is fitted using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, comparing model predictions with observations at their native resolution. We analyse simulated surface brightness maps and compare its accuracy with method B and the results that would be obtained using high-resolution observations without noise. The new method is able to produce reliable column density estimates at a resolution significantly higher than the lowest resolution of the input maps. Compared to method B, it is relatively resilient against the effects of noise. The method is computationally more demanding, but is feasible even in the analysis of large Herschel maps. The proposed empirical modelling method E is demonstrated to be a good alternative for calculating high-resolution column density maps, even with considerable super-resolution. Both methods E and B include the potential for further improvements, e.g., in the form of better a priori constraints.
Simulations predict that galaxies grow primarily through the accretion of gas that has not gone through an accretion shock near the virial radius and that this cold gas flows towards the central galaxy along dense filaments and streams. There is, however, little observational evidence for the existence of these cold flows. We use a large, cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation that has been post-processed with radiative transfer to study the contribution of cold flows to the observed z=3 column density distribution of neutral hydrogen, which our simulation reproduces. We find that nearly all of the HI absorption arises in gas that has remained colder than 10^5.5 K, at least while it was extragalactic. In addition, the majority of the HI is rapidly falling towards a nearby galaxy, with non-negligible contributions from outflowing and static gas. Above a column density of N_HI = 10^17 cm^-2, most of the absorbers reside inside haloes, but the interstellar medium only dominates for N_HI > 10^21 cm^-2. Haloes with total mass below 10^10 Msun dominate the absorption for 10^17<N_HI < 10^21 cm^-2, but the average halo mass increases sharply for higher column densities. Although very little of the HI in absorbers with N_HI <~ 10^20 cm^-2 resides inside galaxies, systems with N_HI > 10^17 cm^-2 are closely related to star formation: most of their HI either will become part of the interstellar medium before z=2 or has been ejected from a galaxy at z>3. Cold accretion flows are critical for the success of our simulation in reproducing the observed rate of incidence of damped Lyman-alpha and particularly that of Lyman limit systems. We therefore conclude that cold accretion flows exist and have already been detected in the form of high column density HI absorbers.
In this paper we present the results from the analysis of a sample of 28 gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow spectral energy distributions, spanning the X-ray through to near-infrared wavelengths. This is the largest sample of GRB afterglow spectral energy distributions thus far studied, providing a strong handle on the optical depth distribution of soft X-ray absorption and dust-extinction systems in GRB host galaxies. We detect an absorption system within the GRB host galaxy in 79% of the sample, and an extinction system in 71% of the sample, and find the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) extinction law to provide an acceptable fit to the host galaxy extinction profile for the majority of cases, consistent with previous findings. The range in the soft X-ray absorption to dust-extinction ratio, N_{H,X}/Av, in GRB host galaxies spans almost two orders of magnitude, and the typical ratios are significantly larger than those of the Magellanic Clouds or Milky Way. Although dust destruction could be a cause, at least in part, for the large N_{H,X}/Av ratios, the good fit provided by the SMC extinction law for the majority of our sample suggests that there is an abundance of small dust grains in the GRB environment, which we would expect to have been destroyed if dust destruction were responsible for the large N_{H,X}/Av ratios. Instead, our analysis suggests that the distribution of N_{H,X}/Av in GRB host galaxies may be mostly intrinsic to these galaxies, and this is further substantiated by evidence for a strong negative correlation between N_{H,X}/Av and metallicity for a subsample of GRB hosts with known metallicity. Furthermore, we find the N_{H,X}/Av ratio and metallicity for this subsample of GRBs to be comparable to the relation found in other more metal-rich galaxies.
We present observations and analysis of the host galaxies of 23 heavily dust-obscured gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Swift satellite during the years 2005-2009, representing all GRBs with an unambiguous host-frame extinction of A_V>1 mag from this period. Deep observations with Keck, Gemini, VLT, HST, and Spitzer successfully detect the host galaxies and establish spectroscopic or photometric redshifts for all 23 events, enabling us to provide measurements of the intrinsic host star-formation rates, stellar masses, and mean extinctions. Compared to the hosts of unobscured GRBs at similar redshifts, we find that the hosts of dust-obscured GRBs are (on average) more massive by about an order of magnitude and also more rapidly star-forming and dust-obscured. While this demonstrates that GRBs populate all types of star-forming galaxies including the most massive, luminous systems at z~2, at redshifts below 1.5 the overall GRB population continues to show a highly significant aversion away from massive galaxies and a preference for low-mass systems relative to what would be expected given a purely SFR-selected galaxy sample. This supports the notion that the GRB rate is strongly dependent on metallicity, and may suggest that the most massive galaxies in the Universe underwent a transition in their chemical properties ~9 Gyr ago. We also conclude that, based on the absence of unobscured GRBs in massive galaxies and the absence of obscured GRBs in low-mass galaxies, the dust distributions of the lowest-mass and the highest-mass galaxies are relatively homogeneous, while intermediate-mass galaxies (~10^9 M_sun) have diverse internal properties.
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