The nature of "dark" gamma-ray bursts

By J. Greiner, T. Kruhler, S. Klose, P. Afonso, C. Clemens, R. Filgas, D. Hartmann, A. K. Yoldacs, M. Nardini, F. Estay and 4 more. 2010

198 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. Thirteen years after the discovery of the first afterglows, the nature of dark gamma-ray bursts (GRB) still eludes explanation: while each long-duration GRB typically has an X-ray afterglow, optical/NIR emission is only seen for 40-60% of them. Aims. Here we use the afterglow detection statistics of the systematic follow-up observations performed with GROND since mid-2007 in order to derive the fraction of "dark bursts" according to different methods, and to distinguish between various scenarios for "dark bursts". Methods. Observations were performed with the 7-channel "Gamma-Ray Optical and Near-infrared Detector" (GROND) at the 2.2 m MPI/ESO telescope. We used the afterglow detection rate in dependence on the delay time between GRB and the first GROND exposure. Results. For long-duration Swift bursts with a detected X-ray afterglow, we achieve a 90% (35/39) detection rate of optical/NIR afterglows whenever our observations started within less than 240 min after the burst. Complementing our GROND data with Swift/XRT spectra we construct broad-band spectral energy distributions and derive rest-frame extinctions. Conclusions. We detect 25-40% "dark bursts", depending on the definition used. The faint optical afterglow emission of "dark bursts" is mainly due to a combination of two contributing factors: (i) moderate intrinsic extinction at moderate redshifts, and (ii) about 22% of "dark" bursts at redshift >5.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3258c18f1af7a2e6bafbe30d928de657a5077a4b

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Citations in the corpus

CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, methodology): “Dark GRB redshifts (indicated as upper limits where appropriate and noted) are adopted from Perley et al. (2009), Greiner et al. (2011), or Krühler et al. (2011).”
The SEDs and host galaxies of the dustiest GRB afterglows (2011, methodology): “GRB 080805 had a very red afterglow, where both an SED and spectral analysis inferred a large dust column (AV ∼ 1.0−1.5 mag), and evidence of a 2175 Å dust feature (Fynbo et al. 2009a; Greiner et al. 2011; Zafar et al. 2011).”
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): “Dust obscuration also is the predominant cause of optical nondetection within samples where GRBs are well observed at early times (Cenko et al. 2009; Perley et al. 2009; Greiner et al. 2011), especially among luminous and wellobserved populations.”
THE OPTICALLY UNBIASED GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST (TOUGH) SURVEY. I. SURVEY DESIGN AND CATALOGS (2012, background): “Recently, more complete surveys (Greiner et al. 2011) have indicated the existence of a fraction of GRB host galaxies being more chemically evolved, more dusty, and of higher mass (Krühler et al. 2011).”
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…”
A COMPLETE SAMPLE OF BRIGHT SWIFT LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. I. SAMPLE PRESENTATION, LUMINOSITY FUNCTION AND EVOLUTION (2011, methodology): “We find that our evolution models provide a good description of the observed redshift distribution of the GROND sample without the need of any adjustment of the free paramters (a KS test gives a probability of 50%), whereas the no evolution model is excluded (probability of 5×10−4).”