Long-Lag, Wide-Pulse Gamma-Ray Bursts

By Jay Norris, J. Bonnell, Demosthenes Kazanas, J. Scargle, Jon Hakkila, Timothy W. Giblin. 2005

233 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Currently, the best available probe of the early phase of gamma-ray burst (GRB) jet attributes is the prompt gamma-ray emission, in which several intrinsic and extrinsic variables determine GRB pulse evolution. Bright, usually complex bursts have many narrow pulses that are difficult to model due to overlap. However, the relatively simple, long spectral lag, wide-pulse bursts may have simpler physics and are easier to model. In this work we analyze the temporal and spectral behavior of wide pulses in 24 long-lag bursts, using a pulse model with two shape parameters—width and asymmetry—and the Band spectral model with three shape parameters. We find that pulses in long-lag bursts are distinguished both temporally and spectrally from those in bright bursts: the pulses in long spectral lag bursts are few in number and ~100 times wider (tens of seconds), have systematically lower peaks in νF(ν), and have harder low-energy spectra and softer high-energy spectra. We find that these five pulse descriptors are essentially uncorrelated for our long-lag sample, suggesting that at least ~5 parameters are needed to model burst temporal and spectral behavior. However, pulse width is strongly correlated with spectral lag; hence, these two parameters may be viewed as mutual surrogates. We infer that accurate formulations for estimating GRB luminosity and total energy will depend on several gamma-ray attributes, at least for long-lag bursts. The prevalence of long-lag bursts near the BATSE trigger threshold, their predominantly low νF(ν) spectral peaks, and relatively steep upper power-law spectral indices indicate that Swift will detect many such bursts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/176e074342763ac1745178ea61ca21cd20110443

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. Pawan Kumar
5. E. Liang
6. Binbin Zhang
7. Xuefeng Wu
8. W. Fong

In Instrumentation

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Liang
3. F. Ryde
4. Binbin Zhang
5. E. Berger
6. D. Burrows
7. W. Fong
8. B. Metzger

Citations in the corpus

• Low-Luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts as a Unique Population: Luminosity Function, Local Rate, and Beaming Factor (2006, result): “…and under-luminous (e.g., Sazonov et al. 2004; Liang et al. 2007), an intuitive speculation of the observed LL-GRBs is that that they are probably relatively nearby (e.g., Norris et al. 2005) and their local rate should be much higher that conventional HLGRBs as we derived in this analysis.”
• DISCERNING THE PHYSICAL ORIGINS OF COSMOLOGICAL GAMMA-RAY BURSTS BASED ON MULTIPLE OBSERVATIONAL CRITERIA: THE CASES OF z = 6.7 GRB 080913, z = 8.2 GRB 090423, AND SOME SHORT/HARD GRBs (2009, background): “An empirical relation w ∝ E−a with a ∼ 0.3 has been suggested (Fenimore et al. 1995; Norris et al. 2005; Liang et al. 2006).”
• Unveiling the origin of X-ray flares in gamma-ray bursts (2010, methodology): “By comparing the BATSE broad pulses from the Norris et al. (2005) sample with X-ray flares, this different trend is evi- 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Log @tpkD HsL L o g @ w t p k D 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 5 10 15 w tpk N um be r bi n- 1”
• An Ordinary Short Gamma-Ray Burst with Extraordinary Implications: Fermi-GBM Detection of GRB 170817A (2017, background): “Pulse Shape and Start Time GRB pulse shapes can be well described by analytic functions (Norris et al. 1996b, 2005; Bhat et al. 2012).”
• An Embedded X-Ray Source Shines through the Aspherical AT 2018cow: Revealing the Inner Workings of the Most Luminous Fast-evolving Optical Transients (2018, methodology): “20sh shD ~ » – ( ) We measure the properties of the X-ray flares in AT 2018cow following the same procedure as is used for long GRBs, adopting a Norris et al. (2005) profile.”
• GAMMA-RAY LIGHT CURVES AND VARIABILITY OF BRIGHT FERMI-DETECTED BLAZARS (2010, methodology): “Other and more general functions are used in gamma-ray burst science (see, for example, Norris et al. 2000, 2005; Vetere et al. 2006).”