Long-duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are an extremely rare outcome of the collapse of massive stars, and are typically found in the distant Universe. Because of its intrinsic luminosity ($Lsim 3 times 10^{53}$ erg s$^{-1}$) and its relative proximit
y ($z=0.34$), GRB 130427A was a unique event that reached the highest fluence observed in the gamma-ray band. Here we present a comprehensive multiwavelength view of GRB 130427A with Swift, the 2-m Liverpool and Faulkes telescopes and by other ground-based facilities, highlighting the evolution of the burst emission from the prompt to the afterglow phase. The properties of GRB 130427A are similar to those of the most luminous, high-redshift GRBs, suggesting that a common central engine is responsible for producing GRBs in both the contemporary and the early Universe and over the full range of GRB isotropic energies.
We study the possible effects of selection biases on the Ep-Liso correlation caused by the unavoidable presence of flux-limits in the existing samples of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). We consider a well defined complete sample of Swift GRBs and perform Mo
nte Carlo simulations of the GRB population under different assumptions for their luminosity functions. If we assume that there is no correlation between the peak energy Ep and the isotropic luminosity Liso, we are unable to reproduce it as due to the flux limit threshold of the Swift complete sample. We can reject the null hypothesis that there is no intrinsic correlation between Ep and Liso at more than 2.7 sigma level of confidence. This result is robust against the assumptions of our simulations and it is confirmed if we consider, instead of Swift, the trigger threshold of the Batse instrument. Therefore, there must be a physical relation between these two quantities. Our simulations seem to exclude, at a lower confidence level of 1.6 sigma, the possibility that the observed Ep-Liso correlation among different bursts is caused by a boundary, i.e. such that for any given Ep, we see only the largest Liso, which has a flux above the threshold of the current instruments.
We use a nearly complete sample of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) detected by the Swift satellite to study the correlations between the spectral peak energy Ep of the prompt emission, the isotropic energetics Eiso and the isotropic luminosity Liso. This GRB
sample is characterized by a high level of completeness in redshift (90%). This allows us to probe in an unbiased way the issue related to the physical origin of these correlations against selection effects. We find that one burst, GRB 061021, is an outlier to the Ep-Eiso correlation. Despite this case, we find strong Ep-Eiso and Ep-Liso correlations for the bursts of the complete sample. Their slopes, normalisations and dispersions are consistent with those found with the whole sample of bursts with measured redshift and Ep. This means that the biases present in the total sample commonly used to study these correlations do not affect their properties. Finally, we also find no evolution with redshift of the Ep-Eiso and Ep-Liso correlations.
We study the spectral evolution on second and sub--second timescales in 11 long and 12 short Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) with peak flux >8.5e-6 erg/cm2 s (8 keV-35 MeV) detected by the Fermi satellite. The peak flux correlates with the time-averaged peak
energy in both classes of bursts. The peak energy evolution, as a function of time, tracks the evolution of the flux on short timescales in both short and long GRBs. We do not find evidence of an hard-to-soft spectral evolution. While short GRBs have observed peak energies larger than few MeV during most of their evolution, long GRBs can start with a softer peak energy (of few hundreds keV) and become as hard as short ones (i.e. with Ep,obs larger than few MeV) at the peak of their light curve. Six GRBs in our sample have a measured redshift. In these few cases we find that their correlations between the rest frame Ep and the luminosity Liso are less scattered than their correlations in the observer frame between the peak energy Ep,obs and the flux P. We find that the rest frame Ep of long bursts can be as high or even larger than that of short GRBs and that short and long GRBs follow the same Ep-Liso correlation, despite the fact that they likely have different progenitors.
We estimate the bulk Lorentz factor Gamma_0 of 31 GRBs using the measured peak time of their afterglow light curves. We consider two possible scenarios for the estimate of Gamma_0: the case of a homogeneous circumburst medium or a wind density profil
e. The values of Gamma_0 are broadly distributed between few tens and several hundreds with average values ~138 and ~66 for the homogeneous and wind density profile, respectively. We find that the isotropic energy and luminosity correlate in a similar way with Gamma_0, i.e. Eiso Gamma_0^2 and Liso Gamma_0^2, while the peak energy Epeak Gamma_0. These correlations are less scattered in the wind density profile than in the homogeneous case. We then study the energetics, luminosities and spectral properties of our bursts in their comoving frame. The distribution of Liso is very narrow with a dispersion of less than a decade in the wind case, clustering around Liso=5x10^48 erg/s. Peak photon energies cluster around Epeak=6 keV. The newly found correlations involving Gamma_0 offer a general interpretation scheme for the spectral-energy correlations of GRBs. The Epeak-Eiso and Epeak-Liso correlations are due to the different Gamma_0 factors and the collimation-corrected correlation, Epeak-Egamma (obtained by correcting the isotropic quantities for the jet opening angle theta_j), can be explained if theta_j^2*Gamma_0=constant. Assuming the Epeak-Egamma correlation as valid, we find a typical value of theta_j*Gamma_0 ~ 6-20, in agreement with the predictions of magnetically accelerated jet models.
We study the spectral evolution of 13 short duration Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) detected by the Gamma Burst Monitor (GBM) on board Fermi. We study spectra resolved in time at the level of 2-512 ms in the 8 keV-35 MeV energy range. We find a strong corre
lation between the observed peak energy Ep and the flux P within individual short GRBs. The slope of the Ep P^s correlation for individual bursts ranges between ~0.4 and ~1. There is no correlation between the low energy spectral index and the peak energy or the flux. Our results show that in our 13 short GRBs Ep evolves in time tracking the flux. This behavior is similar to what found in the population of long GRBs and it is in agreement with the evidence that long GRBs and (the still few) short GRBs with measured redshifts follow the same rest frame Ep-Liso correlation. Its origin is most likely to be found in the radiative mechanism that has to be the same in both classes of GRBs.
We compare the spectral properties of 227 Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) detected by the Fermi Gamma Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) up to February 2010 with those of bursts detected by the CGRO/BATSE instrument. Out of 227 Fermi GRBs, 166 have a measured peak ener
gy E_peak_obs of their uF( u) spectrum: of these 146 and 20 belong the long and short class, respectively. Fermi long bursts follow the correlations defined by BATSE bursts between their E_peak_obs vs fluence and peak flux: as already shown for the latter ones, these correlations and their slopes do not originate from instrumental selection effects. Fermi/GBM bursts extend such correlations toward lower fluence/peak energy values with respect to BATSE ones whereas no GBM long burst with E_peak_obs exceeding a few MeV is found, despite the possibility of detecting them. Again as for BATSE, $sim$ 5% of long and almost all short GRBs detected by Fermi/GBM are outliers of the E_peak-isotropic equivalent energy (Amati) correlation while no outlier (neither long nor short) of the E_peak-isotropic equivalent luminosity (Yonetoku) correlation is found. Fermi long bursts have similar typical values of E_peak_obs but a harder low energy spectral index with respect to all BATSE events, exacerbating the inconsistency with the limiting slopes of the simplest synchrotron emission models. Although the short GRBs detected by Fermi are still only a few, we confirm that their E_peak_obs is greater and the low energy spectrum is harder than those of long ones. We discuss the robustness of these results with respect to observational biases induced by the differences between the GBM and BATSE instruments.
We study the emission observed at energies greater than 100 MeV of 11 Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) detected by the Fermi/Large Area Telescope (LAT) until October 2009. The GeV emission has three main properties: (i) its duration is often longer than the d
uration of the softer emission detected by the Gamma Burst Monitor (GBM) onboard Fermi [this confirms earlier results from the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET)]; (ii) its spectrum is consistent with F(v) propto v^(-1) and does not show strong spectral evolution; (iii) for the brightest bursts, the flux detected by the LAT decays as a power law with a typical slope: t^(-1.5). We argue that the observed >0.1 GeV flux can be interpreted as afterglow emission shortly following the start of the prompt phase emission as seen at smaller frequencies. The decay slope is what expected if the fireball emission is produced in the radiative regime, i.e. all dissipated energy is radiated away. We also argue that the detectability in the GeV energy range depends on the bulk Lorentz factor Gamma of the bursts, being strongly favoured in the case of large Gamma. This implies that the fraction of bursts detected at high energies corresponds to the fraction of bursts having the largest Gamma. The radiative interpretation can help to explain why the observed X-ray and optical afterglow energetics are much smaller than the energetics emitted during the prompt phase, despite the fact that the collision with the external medium should be more efficient than internal shocks in producing the radiation we see.
We study the distribution of long Gamma Ray Bursts in the Ep-Eiso and in the Ep,obs-Fluence planes through an updated sample of 76 bursts, with measured redshift and spectral parameters, detected up to September 2007. We confirm the existence of a st
rong rest frame correlation Ep ~ Eiso^0.54+-0.01. Contrary to previous studies, no sign of evolution with redshift of the Ep-Eiso correlation (either its slope and normalisation) is found. The 76 bursts define a strong Ep,obs-Fluence correlation in the observer frame (Ep,obs ~ F^0.32+-0.05) with redshifts evenly distributed along this correlation. We study possible instrumental selection effects in the observer frame Ep,obs-Fluence plane. In particular, we concentrate on the minimum peak flux necessary to trigger a given GRB detector (trigger threshold) and the minimum fluence a burst must have to determine the value of Ep,obs (spectral analysis threshold). We find that the latter dominates in the Ep,obs-Fluence plane over the former. Our analysis shows, however, that these instrumental selection effects do not dominate for bursts detected before the launch of the Swift satellite, while the spectral analysis threshold is the dominant truncation effect of the Swift GRB sample (27 out of 76 events). This suggests that the Ep,obs-Fluence correlation defined by the pre--Swift sample could be affected by other, still not understood, selection effects. Besides we caution about the conclusions on the existence of the Ep,obs-Fluence correlation based on our Swift sample alone.
In their recent paper, Campana et al. (2007) found that 5 bursts, among those detected by Swift, are outliers with respect to the E_peak-E_gamma (Ghirlanda) correlation. We instead argue that they are not.
