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Register a new userHints for families of GRBs improving the Hubble diagram
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Added by
Vincenzo F. Cardone Dr
Publication date
2013
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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As soon as their extragalactic origins were established, the hope to make Gamma - Ray Bursts (GRBs) standardizeable candles to probe the very high - z universe has opened the search for scaling relations between redshift independent observable quantities and distance dependent ones. Although some remarkable success has been achieved, the empirical correlations thus found are still affected by a significant intrinsic scatter which downgrades the precision in the inferred GRBs Hubble diagram. We investigate here whether this scatter may come from fitting together objects belonging to intrinsically different classes. To this end, we rely on a cladistics analysis to partition GRBs in homogenous families according to their rest frame properties. Although the poor statistics prevent us from drawing a definitive answer, we find that both the intrinsic scatter and the coefficients of the $E_{peak}$,-,$E_{iso}$ and $E_{peak}$,-,$L$ correlations significantly change depending on which subsample is fitted. It turns out that the fit to the full sample leads to a scaling relation which approximately follows the diagonal of the region delimited by the fits to each homogenous class. We therefore argue that a preliminary identification of the class a GRB belongs to is necessary in order to select the right scaling relation to be used in order to not bias the distance determination and hence the Hubble diagram.
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Gamma-ray bursts are usually classified through their high-energy emission into short-duration and long-duration bursts, which presumably reflect two different types of progenitors. However, it has been shown on statistical grounds that a third, intermediate population is needed in this classification scheme, although an extensive study of the properties of this class has so far not been done. The large amount of follow-up studies generated during the Swift era allows us to have a suficient sample to attempt a study of this third population through the properties of their prompt emission and their afterglows. Our study is focused on a sample of GRBs observed by Swift during its first four years of operation. The sample contains those bursts with measured redshift since this allows us to derive intrinsic properties. Intermediate bursts are less energetic and have dimmer afterglows than long GRBs, especially when considering the X-ray light curves, which are on average one order of magnitude fainter than long bursts. There is a less significant trend in the redshift distribution that places intermediate bursts closer than long bursts. Except for this, intermediate bursts show similar properties to long bursts. In particular, they follow the Epeak vs. Eiso correlation and have, on average, positive spectral lags with a distribution similar to that of long bursts. Like long GRBs, they normally have an associated supernova, although some intermediate bursts have shown no supernova component. This study shows that intermediate bursts are different from short bursts and, in spite of sharing many properties with long bursts, there are some differences between them as well. We suggest that the physical difference between intermediate and long bursts could be that for the first the ejecta are thin shells while for the latter they are thick shells.
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