Swifts remarkable ability to quickly localize gamma-ray bursts has led to the accumulation of a sizable burst sample for which both angular locations and redshifts are measured. This sample has become large enough that it can potentially be used to p
robe angular anisotropies indicative of large-scale universal structure. In a previous work, a large clustering of gamma-ray bursts at redshift z about 2 was reported in the general direction of the constellations of Hercules and Corona Borealis. Since that report, a 42 per cent increase in the number of z about 2 gamma-ray bursts has been observed, warranting an updated analysis. Surprisingly, the cluster is more pronounced now than it was when it was first reported.
The Fermi GBM Catalog has been recently published. Previous classification analyses of the BATSE, RHESSI, BeppoSAX, and Swift databases found three types of gamma-ray bursts. Now we analyzed the GBM catalog to classify the GRBs. PCA and Multiclusteri
ng analysis revealed three groups. Validation of these groups, in terms of the observed variables, shows that one of the groups coincides with the short GRBs. The other two groups split the long class into a bright and dim part, as defined by the peak flux. Additional analysis is needed to determine whether this splitting is only a mathematical byproduct of the analysis or has some real physical meaning.
Research over the past three decades has revolutionized the field of cosmology while supporting the standard cosmological model. However, the cosmological principle of Universal homogeneity and isotropy has always been in question, since structures a
s large as the survey size have always been found as the survey size has increased. Until now, the largest known structure in our Universe is the Sloan Great Wall (SGW), which is more than 400 Mpc long and located approximately one billion light-years away. Here we report the discovery of a structure at least six times larger than the Sloan Great Wall that is suggested by the distribution of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Gamma-ray bursts are the most energetic explosions in the Universe. They are associated with the stellar endpoints of massive stars and are found in and near distant galaxies. Therefore, they are very good indicators of the dense part of the Universe containing normal matter. As of July 2012, 283 GRB redshifts have been measured. If one subdivides this GRB sample into nine radial parts and compares the sky distributions of these subsamples (each containing 31 GRBs), one can observe that the fourth subsample (1.6 < z < 2.1) differs significantly from the others in that many of the GRBs are concentrated in the same angular area of the sky. Using the two-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the significance of this observation is found to be less than 0.05 per cent. Fourteen out of the 31 Gamma-Ray Bursts in this redshift band are concentrated in approximately 1/8 of the sky. The binomial probability to find such a deviation is p=0.0000055. This huge structure lies ten times farther away than the Sloan Great Wall, at a distance of approximately ten billion light-years. The size of the structure defined by these GRBs is about 2000-3000 Mpc, or more than six times the size of the largest known object (SGW) in the Universe.
The Swift satellite made a real break through with measuring simultaneously the gamma X-ray and optical data of GRBs, effectively. Although, the satellite measures the gamma, X-ray and optical properties almost in the same time a significant fraction
s of GRBs remain undetected in the optical domain. In a large number of cases only an upper bound is obtained. Survival analysis is a tool for studying samples where a part of the cases has only an upper (lower) limit. The obtained survival function may depend on some other variables. The Cox regression is a way to study these dependencies. We studied the dependence of the optical brightness (obtained by the UVOT) on the gamma and X-ray properties, measured by the BAT and XRT on board of the Swift satellite. We showed that the gamma peak flux has the greatest impact on the afterglows optical brightness while the gamma photon index and the X-ray flux do not. This effect probably originates in the energetics of the jet launched from the central engine of the GRB which triggers the afterglow.
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, inte
rmediate 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.
Two classes of gamma-ray bursts have been identified in the BATSE catalogs characterized by durations shorter and longer than about 2 seconds. There are, however, some indications for the existence of a third class. Swift satellite detectors have dif
ferent spectral sensitivity than pre-Swift ones for gamma-ray bursts. Therefore, it is worth to reanalyze the durations and their distribution. We analyze, the maximum likelihood estimation, the bursts duration distribution, published in The First BAT Catalog, whether it contains two, three or more groups. The three log-normal fit is significantly (99.54% probability) better than the two for the duration distribution. Monte-Carlo simulations also confirm this probability (99.2%). Similarly, in previous results we found that the fourth component is not needed. The relative frequencies of the distribution of the groups are 7% short 35% intermediate and 58% long. Although the relative frequencies of the groups are different than in the BATSE GRB sample, the difference in the instrument spectral sensitivities can explain this bias on a natural way. This means theoretical models may be needed to explain three different type of gamma-ray bursts.
Principal component analysis is a statistical method, which lowers the number of important variables in a data set. The use of this method for the bursts spectra and afterglows is discussed in this paper. The analysis indicates that three principal c
omponents are enough among the eight ones to describe the variablity of the data. The correlation between spectral index alpha and the redshift suggests that the thermal emission component becomes more dominant at larger redshifts.
