The Afterglow, Energetics, and Host Galaxy of the Short-Hard Gamma-Ray Burst 051221a

By A. Soderberg, E. Berger, M. Kasliwal, D. Frail, P. A. Price, Brian P. Schmidt, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, D. Fox, S. Cenko, A. Gal-yam and 2 more. 2006

259 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present detailed optical, X-ray, and radio observations of the bright afterglow of the short gamma-ray burst 051221a obtained with Gemini, Swift XRT, and the Very Large Array, as well as optical spectra from which we measure the redshift of the burst, z = 0.5464. At this redshift the isotropic-equivalent prompt energy release was about 1.5 × 1051 ergs, and using a standard afterglow synchrotron model, we find that the blast wave kinetic energy is similar, EK,iso ≈ 8.4 × 1051 ergs. An observed jet break at t ≈ 5 days indicates that the opening angle is θj ≈ 7° and the total beaming-corrected energy is therefore ≈2.5 × 1049 ergs, comparable to the values inferred for previous short GRBs. We further show that the burst experienced an episode of energy injection by a factor of 3.4 between t = 1.4 and 3.4 hr, which was accompanied by reverse shock emission in the radio band. This result provides continued evidence that the central engines of short GRBs may be active significantly longer than the duration of the burst and/or produce a wide range of Lorentz factors. Finally, we show that the host galaxy is actively forming stars at a rate of about 1.6 M☉ yr-1, yet exhibits evidence for an appreciable population of old stars (~1 Gyr) and near-solar metallicity. These properties are intermediate between those of long GRB hosts and previous short burst hosts. The lack of bright supernova emission and the low circumburst density (n ~ 10-3 cm-3), however, continue to support the idea that short bursts are not related to massive stellar death. Given that the total energy release is larger than the predicted yield for a neutrino annihilation mechanism, this suggests that magnetohydrodynamic processes may be required to power the burst.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science, Microbiology

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. E. Nakar
5. D. Kasen
6. Pawan Kumar
7. E. Quataert
8. T. Piran

In Atmospheric Science

1. B. Metzger
2. E. Berger
3. T. Piran
4. E. Nakar
5. Bing Zhang
6. E. Quataert
7. Stephan Rosswog
8. A. Bauswein

In Microbiology

1. E. Berger

Citations in the corpus

• Follow Up of GW170817 and Its Electromagnetic Counterpart by Australian-Led Observing Programmes (2017, background): “However, past sGRBs that were detected in the radio despite being 30–60 times more distant than this event (Berger et al. 2005; Soderberg et al. 2006; Fong et al. 2014; PASA, 34, e069 (2017) doi:10.1017/pasa.2017.65 Zhang et al. 2017) imply that future neutron star mergers at these (40 Mpc)…”
• Short-hard gamma-ray bursts (2007, methodology): “…the framework of the standard afterglow model in several papers (Hjorth et al. , 2005b; Fox et al. , 2005; Berger et al. , 2005; Lee, Ramirez-Ruiz & Granot, 2005; Bloom et al. , 2006; Panaitescu, 2006; Campana et al. , 2006; Burrows et al. , 2006; Grupe et al. , 2006; Soderberg et al. , 2006a).”
• Signatures of magnetar central engines in short GRB light curves (2013, background): “(1)Cummings et al. (2005b); Soderberg et al. (2006)(2)Markwardt et al. (2006a); Roming et al. (2006)(3)Markwardt et al. (2006b); Stratta et al. (2007) (4)Parsons et al. (2007); Berger et al. (2009); Kocevski et al. (2010)(5)Sato et al. (2009); Antonelli et al. (2009); Xin et al. (2011)(6)Barthelmy…”
• IDENTIFYING ELUSIVE ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE MERGERS: AN END-TO-END SIMULATION (2012, background): “0.1 cm−3 (Berger et al. 2005; Soderberg et al. 2006).”
• THE AFTERGLOWS OF SWIFT-ERA GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. TYPE I GRB VERSUS TYPE II GRB OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS (2008, methodology): “Furthermore, there is as yet only little evidence of a standard energy reservoir for Type I GRBs (e.g., Soderberg et al. 2006a).”
• Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger (2017, background): “…Fong & Berger 2013; Tunnicliffe et al. 2014), which was predicted to arise from supernova kicks(Narayan et al. 1992; Bloom et al. 1999); and (iii) the absence of associated supernovae(Fox et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005c, 2005a; Soderberg et al. 2006; Kocevski et al. 2010; Berger et al. 2013a).”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. VI. Radio Constraints on a Relativistic Jet and Predictions for Late-time Emission from the Kilonova Ejecta (2017, background): “A decade of SGRB radio follow-up at GHz frequencies yielded four detections and multiple upper limits (Berger et al. 2005; Soderberg et al. 2006; Fong et al. 2014, 2015), providing tight constraints on the energetics and densities of the burst environments.”
• Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2013, background): “…a two orders of magnitude downward correctionin the energy scale, with a resulting typical value ofEγ ∼ EK ∼ few× 1051 erg (Bloom, Frail & Sari 2001; Frail et al. 2001; Berger, Kulkarni & Frail 2003), albeit with a spread of about an order of magnitude (Soderberg et al. 2006b, Cenko et al. 2011).”
• A RADIO-SELECTED SAMPLE OF GAMMA-RAY BURST AFTERGLOWS (2011, methodology): “A population of dark bursts has been identified (Rol et al. 2005), as has a population of nearby, low-luminosity events (Sazonov et al. 2004; Soderberg et al. 2006b; Pian et al. 2006; Liang et al. 2007; Kann et al. 2010).”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, background): “Such a high event rate for LL-GRBs has been independently derived by several groups (e.g., Cobb et al. 2006a; Pian et al. 2006; Soderberg et al. 2006a; Liang et al. 2006c).”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, background): “There have been a handful of observational searches for KN emission: GRB 050709 [424, 425]; GRB 051221A [426]; GRB 060614 [396, 427]; GRB 070724A [428, 429]; GRB 080503 [430, 431]; GRB 080905A [432]; and GRB 130603B [395, 433].”
• SYSTEMATICS OF DYNAMICAL MASS EJECTION, NUCLEOSYNTHESIS, AND RADIOACTIVELY POWERED ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNALS FROM NEUTRON-STAR MERGERS (2013, background): “Moreover, the circumburst densities affecting the signal brightness and length are uncertain, and low densities are likely to reduce the radio detectability (Berger et al. 2005; Soderberg et al. 2006; Metzger & Berger 2012; Fong et al. 2012, 2013).”
• Electromagnetic counterparts of compact object mergers powered by the radioactive decay of r‐process nuclei (2010, background): “Although some emission may be observed by off-axis viewers, such “or- phan” afterglows (e.g. Totani & Panaitescu 2002) are typically expected to peak at radio wavelengths on a timescale of months-years (Soderberg et al. 2006; Rossi et al. 2008; Zhang & MacFadyen 2009).”
• HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST GALAXIES: MORPHOLOGIES, OFFSETS, AND LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS (2009, background): “5 For a complete discussion of the galaxy associations we refer the reader to the following papers: GRB 050709: Fox et al. (2005); GRB 050724: Berger et al. (2005); GRB 051221: Soderberg et al. (2006); GRB 060121: Levan et al. (2006a); GRB 061006: Berger et al. (2007) and D’Avanzo et al. (2009).”
• Fallback accretion in the aftermath of a compact binary merger (2006, background): “…et al. 2005) and without star formation (Berger et al. 2005; Barthelmy et al. 2005), the emitted gamma-ray energy is substantially lower compared to long bursts (Soderberg et al. 2006) and no supernova explosion seems to accompany the burst (Bloom et al. 2006; Hjorth et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005).”
• EXPLORING SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AS GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE STANDARD SIRENS (2009, background): “We note that, to date, there exist only two tentative observations which suggest that SHBs may have collimated emission (Grupe et al. 2006, Burrows et al. 2006, Soderberg et al. 2006); we therefore present results for both moderate collimation and for isotropic SHB emission.”
• THE LOCATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AS EVIDENCE FOR COMPACT OBJECT BINARY PROGENITORS (2013, unknown): “0.1 cm−3 (Soderberg et al. 2006).”