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Register a new userThe prompt-early afterglow connection in GRBs
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R. Mochkovitch UPMC-CNRS
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We study the observed correlations between the duration and luminosity of the early afterglow plateau and the isotropic gamma-ray energy release during the prompt phase. We discuss these correlations in the context of two scenarios for the origin of the plateaus. In the first one the afterglow is made by the forward shock and the plateau results from variations of the microphysics parameters while in the second one the early afterglow is made by a long-lived reverse shock propagating in a low Lorentz factor tail of the ejecta.
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The early X-ray afterglow of gamma-ray bursts revealed by Swift carried many surprises. We focus in this paper on the plateau phase whose origin remains highly debated. We confront several newly discovered correlations between prompt and afterglow quantities (isotropic emitted energy in gamma-rays, luminosity and duration of the plateau) to several models proposed for the origin of plateaus in order to check if they can account for these observed correlations. We first show that the scenario of plateau formation by energy injection into the forward shock leads to an efficiency crisis for the prompt phase and therefore study two possible alternatives: the first one still takes place within the framework of the standard forward shock model but allows for a variation of the microphysics parameters to reduce the radiative efficiency at early times; in the second scenario the early afterglow results from a long-lived reverse shock. Its shape then depends on the distribution of energy as a function of Lorentz factor in the ejecta. In both cases, we first present simple analytical estimates of the plateau luminosity and duration and then compute detailed light curves. In the two considered scenarios we find that plateaus following the observed correlations can be obtained under the condition that specific additional ingredients are included. In the forward shock scenario, the preferred model supposes a wind external medium and a microphysics parameter epsilon_e that first varies as n^{- u} (n being the external density), with u~1 to get a flat plateau, before staying constant below a critical density n_0. To produce a plateau in the reverse shock scenario the ejecta must contain a tail of low Lorentz factor with a peak of energy deposition at Gamma >~ 10.
We use a wavelet technique to investigate the time variations in the light curves from a sample of GRBs detected by Fermi and Swift. We focus primarily on the behavior of the flaring region of Swift-XRT light curves in order to explore connections between variability time scales and pulse parameters (such as rise and decay times, widths, strengths, and separation distributions) and spectral lags. Tight correlations between some of these temporal features suggest a common origin for the production of X-ray flares and the prompt emission.
We present results of the prompt, early, and afterglow optical observations of five gamma-ray bursts, GRBs 100901A, 100902A, 100905A, 100906A, and 101020A, made with the Mobile Astronomical System of TElescope-Robots in Russia (MASTER-II net), the 1.5-m telescope of Sierra-Nevada Observatory, and the 2.56-m Nordic Optical Telescope. For two sources, GRB 100901A and GRB 100906A, we detected optical counterparts and obtained light curves starting before cessation of gamma-ray emission, at 113 s and 48 s after the trigger, respectively. Observations of GRB 100906A were conducted with two polarizing filters. Observations of the other three bursts gave the upper limits on the optical flux; their properties are briefly discussed. More detailed analysis of GRB 100901A and GRB 100906A supplemented by Swift data provides the following results and indicates different origins of the prompt optical radiation in the two bursts. The light curves patterns and spectral distributions suggest a common production site of the prompt optical and high-energy emission in GRB 100901A. Results of spectral fits for GRB 100901A in the range from the optical to X-rays favor power-law energy distributions with similar values of the optical extinction in the host galaxy. GRB 100906A produced a smoothly peaking optical light curve suggesting that the prompt optical radiation in this GRB originated in a front shock. This is supported by a spectral analysis. We have found that the Amati and Ghirlanda relations are satisfied for GRB 100906A. An upper limit on the value of the optical extinction on the host of GRB 100906A is obtained.
We present the first results of a program to systematically study the optical-to-X-ray spectral energy distribution (SED) of Swift GRB afterglows with known redshift. The goal is to study the properties of the GRB explosion and of the intervening absorbing material. In this report we present the preliminary analysis on 23 afterglows. Thanks to Swift, we could build the SED at early times after the GRB (minutes to hours). We derived the Hydrogen column densities and the spectral slopes from the X-ray spectrum. We then constrained the visual extinction by requiring that the combined optical/X-ray SED is due to synchrotron, namely either a single power law or a broken power law with a slope change by 0.5. We confirm a low dust-to-metal ratio, smaller than in the SMC, even from the analysis of data taken significantly earlier than previously possible. Our analysis does not support the existence of ``grey dust. We also find that the synchrotron spectrum works remarkably well to explain afterglow SEDs. We clearly see, however, that during the X-ray steep decay phases and the flares, the X-ray radiation cannot be due only to afterglow emission.
We present and perform a detailed analysis of multi-wavelength observations of thisgrb, an optical bright GRB with an observed reverse shock (RS) signature. Observations of this GRB were acquired with the BOOTES-4 robotic telescope, the fermi, and the swift missions. Time-resolved spectroscopy of the prompt emission shows that changes to the peak energy (Ep) tracks intensity and the low-energy spectral index seems to follow the intensity for the first episode, whereas this tracking behavior is less clear during the second episode. The fit to the afterglow light curves shows that the early optical afterglow can be described with RS emission and is consistent with the thin shell scenario of the constant ambient medium. The late time afterglow decay is also consistent with the prediction of the external forward shock (FS) model. We determine the properties of the shocks, Lorentz factor, magnetization parameters, and ambient density of thisgrb, and compare these parameters with another 12 GRBs, consistent with having RS produced by thin shells in an ISM-like medium. The value of the magnetization parameter ($R_{rm B} approx 18$) indicates a moderately magnetized baryonic dominant jet composition for thisgrb. We also report the host galaxy photometric observations of thisgrb obtained with 10.4m GTC, 3.5m CAHA, and 3.6m DOT telescopes and find the host (photo $z$ = $2.8^{+0.7}_{-0.9}$) to be a high mass, star-forming galaxy with a star formation rate of $20 pm 10 msun$ $rm yr^{-1}$.
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