A New Population of High-Redshift Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts

By E. Berger, D. Fox, P. Price, E. Nakar, A. Gal-yam, D. Holz, Brian P. Schmidt, A. Cucchiara, S. Cenko, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni and 16 more. 2006

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The redshift distribution of the short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is a crucial, but currently fragmentary, clue to the nature of their progenitors. Here we present optical observations of nine short GRBs obtained with Gemini, Magellan, and the Hubble Space Telescope. We detect the afterglows and host galaxies of two short bursts, and host galaxies for two additional bursts with known optical afterglow positions, and five with X-ray positions (≲6'' radius). In eight of the nine cases we find that the most probable host galaxies are faint, R ≈ 23-26.5 mag, and are therefore starkly different from the first few short GRB hosts with R ≈ 17-22 mag and z ≲ 0.5. Indeed, we measure spectroscopic redshifts of z ≈ 0.4-1.1 for the four brightest hosts. A comparison to large field galaxy samples, as well as the hosts of long GRBs and previous short GRBs, indicates that the fainter hosts likely reside at z ≳ 1. Our most conservative limit is that at least half of the five hosts without a known redshift reside at z > 0.7 (97% confidence level), suggesting that about to of all short GRBs originate at higher redshifts than previously determined. This has two important implications: (1) we constrain the acceptable age distributions to a wide lognormal (σ ≳ 1) with τ* ~ 4-8 Gyr, or to a power law, P(τ) ∝ τn, with -1 ≲ n ≲ 0; and (2) the inferred isotropic energies, Eγ,iso ~ 1050-1052 ergs, are significantly larger than ~1048-1049 ergs for the low-redshift, short GRBs, indicating a large spread in energy release or jet opening angles. Finally, we reiterate the importance of short GRBs as potential gravitational-wave sources and find a conservative detection rate with the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) of ~2-6 yr-1.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/405e8c05a4c483344357fe0e17136c7d85717bb7

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. F. Mannucci
5. E. Nakar
6. E. Quataert
7. E. Liang
8. A. Piro

Citations in the corpus

• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “…GMOS r 1500 1.3 0.18 240 Gemini-S GMOS r 1800 < 0.48 060502B 16.8 Gemini-N GMOS R 1500 < 0.62 Price et al. (2006) 060801 16.0 Hale LFC r 1500 < 0.83 Berger et al. (2007) 061006 14.9 VLT FORS1 I 1800 4.3 0.20 D’Avanzo et al. (2009) 45.9 VLT FORS1 I 1800 2.5 0.17 60.0 VLT FORS1 I 1260 2.6…”
• 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): “Although there is an observational selection effect that favors redshift identification for starforming galaxies, the GRBs with bright host galaxies but no redshift identifications (e.g. GRB 051210, La Parola et al. 2006; Berger et al. 2007) are not the predominant population of short/hard GRBs.”
• The astrophysical gravitational wave stochastic background (2011, result): “(19) This broad model accounts for the wide range of merger times observed in binary pulsars and is also consistent with short gamma ray burst observations in both late and early type galaxies (Berger et al. 2007).”
• GRB 080503: IMPLICATIONS OF A NAKED SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST DOMINATED BY EXTENDED EMISSION (2008, background): “…with relatively low-luminosity, high-SFR galaxies (Fox et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005b; Covino et al. 2006; Levan et al. 2006) and at much higher redshifts (Berger et al. 2007; Cenko et al. 2008) than the better-known elliptical hosts of the first few well-localized SGRBs 050509B and 050724.”
• Formation and evolution of compact binaries in globular clusters – II. Binaries with neutron stars (2007, background): “Also, recent observations seem to indicate that majority ofshort GRBs are associated with young hosts (Berger et al. 2007).”
• HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST GALAXIES: MORPHOLOGIES, OFFSETS, AND LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS (2009, methodology): “11 For the faint hosts without a known redshift (GRBs 051210, 060121, 060313, and possibly 061201) we assumez= 1 (Berger et al. 2007), and take advantage of the relative flatness of the angular diameter distance as a function of redshift beyondz∼ 0.5.”
• EXPLORING SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AS GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE STANDARD SIRENS (2009, background): “Recent evidence supports the hypothesis that many short-hard gamma-ray bursts (SHBs) are indeed associated with such mergers (Fox et al. 2005, Nakar et al. 2006, Berger et al. 2007, Perley et al. 2008).”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2009, background): “…(Stanek et al. 2006, Thöne et al. 2008, Savaglio et al. 2009), where possible, and in some cases tentative conclusions have been drawn on the basis of cruder relations such as mass-metallicity metrics (Berger et al. 2007a) and host galaxy luminosities and morphologies (Fruchter et al. 2006).”
• Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger (2017, background): “These hints included: (i) their association with both elliptical and star-forming galaxies (Barthelmy et al. 2005; Prochaska et al. 2006; Berger et al. 2007; Ofek et al. 2007; Troja et al. 2008; D’Avanzo et al. 2009; Fong et al. 2013), due to a very wide range of delay times, as predicted…”
• Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2013, methodology): “…to afterglow follow-up observations, there hasbeen an intensive effort to characterize the environments of short GRBs from sub-galactic to galaxy cluster cales (e.g.,Berger et al. 2007b; Berger 2009; D’Avanzo et al. 2009; Fong, Berger & Fox 2010; Berger 2011; Fong et al. 2013; Fong & Berger 2013).”
• THE AFTERGLOWS OF SWIFT-ERA GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. TYPE I GRB VERSUS TYPE II GRB OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS (2008, background): “The latter interpretation was confirmed spectroscopically by Berger et al. (2007), who found it to be a quasar at z = 0.703.”