No Arabic abstract
We report the discovery of a transient and fading hard X-ray emission in the BATSE lightcurves of a sample of short gamma-ray bursts. We have summed each of the four channel BATSE light curves of 76 short bursts to uncover the average overall temporal and spectral evolution of a possible transient signal following the prompt flux. We found an excess emission peaking ~30 s after the prompt one, detectable for ~100 s. The soft power-law spectrum and the time-evolution of this transient signal suggest that it is produced by the deceleration of a relativistic expanding source, as predicted by the afterglow model.
The origin of the X-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursts has regularly been debated. We fit both the fireball-shock and millisecond-magnetar models of gamma-ray bursts to the X-ray data of GRB 130603B and 140903A. We use Bayesian model selection to answer the question of which model best explains the data. This is dependent on the maximum allowed non-rotating neutron star mass $M_{textrm{TOV}}$, which depends solely on the unknown nuclear equation of state. We show that the data for GRB140903A favours the millisecond-magnetar model for all possible equations of state, while the data for GRB130603B favours the millisecond-magnetar model if $M_{textrm{TOV}} gtrsim 2.3 M_{odot}$. If $M_{textrm{TOV}} lesssim 2.3 M_{odot}$, the data for GRB130603B supports the fireball-shock model. We discuss implications of this result in regards to the nuclear equation of state and the prospect of gravitational-wave emission from newly-born millisecond magnetars.
I will review the constraints set by X-ray measurements of afterglows on several issues of GRB, with particular regard to the fireball model, the environment, the progenitor and dark GRB.
We consider the spatial offsets of short hard gamma-ray bursts (SHBs) from their host galaxies. We show that all SHBs with extended duration soft emission components lie very close to their hosts. We suggest that NS-BH binary mergers offer a natural explanation for the properties of this extended duration/low offset group. SHBs with large offsets have no observed extended emission components and are less likely to have an optically detected afterglow, properties consistent with NS-NS binary mergers occurring in low density environments.
We present a set of seventeen Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) with known redshifts and X-ray afterglow emission. We apply cosmological corrections in order to compare their fluxes normalized at a redshift of 1. Two classes of GRB can be defined using their X-ray afterglow light curves. We show that the brightest afterglows seem to decay faster than the dimer ones. We also point out evidences for a possible flux limit of the X-ray afterglow depending on the time elapsed since the burst. We try to interpret these observations in the framework of the canonical fireball model of GRB afterglow emission.
We investigate the effect of X-ray echo emission in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We find that the echo emission can provide an alternative way of understanding X-ray shallow decays and jet breaks. In particular, a shallow decay followed by a normal decay and a further rapid decay of X-ray afterglows can be together explained as being due to the echo from prompt X-ray emission scattered by dust grains in a massive wind bubble around a GRB progenitor. We also introduce an extra temporal break in the X-ray echo emission. By fitting the afterglow light curves, we can measure the locations of the massive wind bubbles, which will bring us closer to finding the mass loss rate, wind velocity, and the age of the progenitors prior to the GRB explosions.