THE HOST GALAXIES OF SWIFT DARK GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: OBSERVATIONAL CONSTRAINTS ON HIGHLY OBSCURED AND VERY HIGH REDSHIFT GRBs

By D. Perley, S. Cenko, Joshua S. Bloom, Hsiao-Wen Chen, N. Butler, D. Kocevski, J. Xavier Prochaska, M. Brodwin, Karl Glazebrook, M. Kasliwal and 6 more. 2009

169 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this work, we present the first results of our imaging campaign at Keck Observatory to identify the host galaxies of “dark” gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), events with no detected optical afterglow or with detected optical flux significantly fainter than expected from the observed X-ray afterglow. We find that out of a uniform sample of 29 Swift bursts rapidly observed by the Palomar 60 inch telescope through 2008 March (14 of which we classify as dark), all events have either a detected optical afterglow, a probable optical host-galaxy detection, or both. Our results constrain the fraction of Swift GRBs coming from very high redshift (z>7), such as the recent GRB 090423, to between 0.2% and 7% at 80% confidence. In contrast, a significant fraction of the sample requires large extinction columns (host-frame AV ≳ 1 mag, with several events showing AV> 2–6 mag), identifying dust extinction as the dominant cause of the dark GRB phenomenon. We infer that a significant fraction of GRBs (and, by association, of high-mass star formation) occurs in highly obscured regions. However, the host galaxies of dark GRBs seem to have normal optical colors, suggesting that the source of obscuring dust is local to the vicinity of the GRB progenitor or highly unevenly distributed within the host galaxy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1bf906ea71f257f531eaa7ec4a5ffa38a7caa880

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Citations in the corpus

• THE OPTICALLY UNBIASED GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST (TOUGH) SURVEY. I. SURVEY DESIGN AND CATALOGS (2012, background): “Of special interest is the study of dark bursts which are believed to be caused mostly by dust obscuration (e.g., Djorgovski et al. 2001; Rol et al. 2007; Jaunsen et al. 2008; Tanvir et al. 2008; Perley et al. 2009; Krühler et al. 2011; Svensson et al. 2012; Rossi et al. 2012).”
• LOW-RESOLUTION SPECTROSCOPY OF GAMMA-RAY BURST OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS: BIASES IN THE SWIFT SAMPLE AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ABSORBERS (2009, background): “…ah 0.68 Cu hiara et al. (2007b)070129 < 3.4 a 0.62 This work070110 2.35 ah 0.77 Jaunsen et al. (2007b)070103 < 3.5 (XRT) 2.1 < 0.48 061222A 2.09 h < 0.22 Perley et al. (2009) 163 Table 73 ContinuedGRB z z lass NX [1021 m−2℄ βOX Ref061121 1.31 a 0.64 Bloom et al. (2006b)061110B 3.44 a 0.55 Fynbo…”
• The nature of "dark" gamma-ray bursts (2010, background): “This finding is in line with previous investigations (Melandri et al., 2008; Cenko et al., 2009b; Perley et al., 2009; Fynbo et al., 2009b).”
• A COMPLETE SAMPLE OF BRIGHT SWIFT LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. I. SAMPLE PRESENTATION, LUMINOSITY FUNCTION AND EVOLUTION (2011, background): “Of these 52, all but two (namely GRB 070521; Perley et al. 2009 and GRB 080602; Rossi et al. 2012) have spectroscopic confirmed redshift either from absorption lines over-imposed on the GRB optical afterglow or from emission lines of the GRB host galaxy.”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “For long GRBs, inferred values ofAhostV ≈ 0.5 mag are common, with a substantial fraction of events withAhostV & 1− 2.5 mag (Cenko et al. 2009; Perley et al. 2009a, 2013).”
• GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, methodology): “We use standard procedures (Bloom et al. 2002; Perley et al. 2009) to assign galaxies to GRBs by using the afterglow position with the highest accuracy available.”
• THE SECOND SWIFT BURST ALERT TELESCOPE GAMMA-RAY BURST CATALOG (2011, background): “Furthermore, progress is being made in studying the properties of host galaxies of dark bursts, allowing us to understand the differences in the birth places of dark GRBs, as compared to the hosts of GRBs with bright – 3 – optical afterglows (e.g,. Perley et al. 2009).”
• THE COSMIC RATE, LUMINOSITY FUNCTION, AND INTRINSIC CORRELATIONS OF LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2009, background): “%} of Swift GRBs at z > 5 {z > 7} Perley et al. 2009a, see Figure 11).”
• The metallicity of the long GRB hosts and the fundamental metallicity relation of low-mass galaxies (2010, background): “It is still not known if this dust is spread across the host galaxy, which thus is likely to be metal-rich (Fynbo et al. 2009), or is directly associated to the GRB itself (Perley et al. 2009), maybe without a clear dependece on metallicity.”
• A POPULATION OF MASSIVE, LUMINOUS GALAXIES HOSTING HEAVILY DUST-OBSCURED GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE USE OF GRBs AS TRACERS OF COSMIC STAR FORMATION (2013, background): “As reported by Perley et al. (2009), the host is quite blue, and in fact shows a strong Lyman-α emission feature.”
• THE AFTERGLOW OF GRB 130427A FROM 1 TO 1016 GHz (2013, background): “A sole exception is the category of optically dark GRBs (which constitute about 15% of the population; Perley et al. 2009; Greiner et al. 2011; the nondetection of these events is primarily due to dust extinction, an extrinsic likely not have been detected itself at radio wavelengths prior to the…”
• The SEDs and host galaxies of the dustiest GRB afterglows (2011, background): “These new afterglow samples reach completeness levels of ∼90% (Greiner et al. 2011) and helped ascertain the origin of dark bursts: around three quarters of dark bursts are the result of a dusty afterglow line of sight (e.g., Perley et al. 2009; Greiner et al. 2011).”
• CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, methodology): “Perley et al. (2009) have shown that dark GRBs likely span a wide range of redshifts and so they can be used to provide a valuable estimate of the uncertainty in the overall distribution, corresponding to approximately 25% in N(< z) at fixed z; see their Figure 8 (see also, e.g., Greiner et al.…”
• THE HOST GALAXIES OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. A MASS–METALLICITY RELATION FOR LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST GALAXIES (2010, background): “The primary cause of the dark LGRB phenomenon remains unknown; however, recent evidence has supported the effects of dust extinction, in particular dust that is primarily present in the circumburst environment (Perley et al. 2009).”