HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST GALAXIES: MORPHOLOGIES, OFFSETS, AND LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS

By W. Fong, E. Berger, D. Fox. 2009

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the first comprehensive analysis of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of short-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies. These observations allow us to characterize the galactic and local environments of short GRBs as a powerful constraint on the nature of their progenitors. Using the HST data for 10 short GRB hosts, we determine the host morphological properties, measure precise physical and host-normalized offsets relative to the galaxy centers, and study the locations of short GRBs relative to their host light distributions. We find that most short GRB hosts have exponential disk profiles, characteristic of late-type galaxies, but with a median size that is twice as large as that of long GRB hosts, commensurate with their higher luminosities. The observed distribution of projected physical offsets, supplemented by ground-based measurements, has a median of ≈5 kpc, about five times larger than that for long GRBs, and in good agreement with predicted offset distributions for neutron star–neutron star (NS–NS) binary mergers. For the short GRB population as a whole, we find the following robust constraints: (1) ≳25% have projected offsets of ≲10 kpc; and (2) ≳5% have projected offsets of ≳20 kpc. We find no clear systematic trends for the offset distribution of short GRBs with and without extended soft emission. While the physical offsets are larger than those for long GRBs, the distribution of host-normalized offsets is nearly identical due to the larger size of short GRB hosts. Finally, unlike long GRBs, which are concentrated in the brightest regions of their host galaxies, short GRBs appear to under-represent the light distribution of their hosts; this is true even in comparison to core-collapse and Type Ia supernovae. Based on these results, we conclude that short GRBs are consistent with a progenitor population of NS–NS binaries, but partial contribution from prompt or delayed magnetar formation is also consistent with the data. Our study underscores the importance of future HST observations of the larger existing and growing sample of short GRB hosts, which will allow us to delineate the properties of the progenitor population.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f3e9d956c578d3d6b8671c30fa410e8d9bd2a2e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. E. Quataert
5. Stephan Rosswog
6. Pawan Kumar
7. T. Thompson
8. E. Nakar

In Instrumentation

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. J. Leja
4. Stephan Rosswog
5. B. Metzger
6. W. Fong
7. E. Quataert
8. C. Conroy

Citations in the corpus

• AN r-PROCESS KILONOVA ASSOCIATED WITH THE SHORT-HARD GRB 130603B (2013, background): “…population synthesis predictions for compact object binaries (Berger 2010; Fong et al. 2010; Fong & Begrer 2013); and the lack of spatial correlation between short GRB locations and the underlying distribution of star formation or stellar mass in their hosts (Fong et al. 2010; Fong & Begrer 2013).”
• IDENTIFYING ELUSIVE ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE MERGERS: AN END-TO-END SIMULATION (2012, methodology): “We can easily search 10 times the size of the galaxy to accommodate large kicks of the order of hundred kiloparsec (e.g., Fong et al. 2010; Kasliwal et al. 2012) in NS-NS mergers and still gain a factor of 25 in terms of reduction of false positives.”
• The long-term evolution of neutron star merger remnants – I. The impact of r-process nucleosynthesis (2013, background): “On the other hand, binary systems that had time to travel a few kpc out of the midplane (Narayan et al. 1992; Fryer et al. 1999; Bloom et al. 2002; Rosswog et al. 2003; Fong et al. 2010) may occur in a much lower density surrounding.”
• WHAT IS THE MOST PROMISING ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPART OF A NEUTRON STAR BINARY MERGER? (2011, background): “The potential wealth of complementary information encoded in the EM signal is likewise essential to fully unraveling the astrophysical context of the event (Phinney 2009; Mandel & O’Shaughnessy 2010), for example an association with specific stellar populations (e.g., Fong et al. 2010).”
• THE LIGHT CURVE OF THE MACRONOVA ASSOCIATED WITH THE LONG–SHORT BURST GRB 060614 (2015, background): “Indirect evidence for SGRBs originating from compact-binaries (Gehrels et al. 2005; Fong et al. 2010; Leibler et al. 2010; Fong & Berger 2013; Berger 2014) include the location of SGRBs in elliptical galaxies, no associated supernova (SN), large galaxy offsets (> 100 kpc) that match population…”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, methodology): “The local and galactic environments of short GRBs (Fong et al. 2010; Berger 2010; Fong & Berger 2013), together with 1 Einstein Fellow 2 Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Av- enue, Tucson, AZ 85721 3 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street,…”
• DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE GALAXIES HOSTING SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2013, background): “Finally, an examination of short GRB locations with respectto their host light distributions revealed that they under-represent their host UV/optical light (Fong et al. 2010).”
• The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts (2010, result): “This model is consistent with the host galaxy demographics, and the lack of a bright supernova, associated with short GRBs (e.g. Bloom et al. 2006; Berger et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005; Perley et al. 2009; Berger 2010; Fong et al. 2010).”
• Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems (2017, background): “…can be combined with the merger time for the DNS system to estimate the offset distance of the future DNS merger (short GRB) from its birth place in the Galactic disk (e.g. Bloom et al. 1999; Perna & Belczynski 2002; Voss & Tauris 2003; Fong et al. 2010; Kelley et al. 2010; Beniamini et al. 2016b).”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, background): “5− 75 kpc away, median of 5 kpc [329, 330]) and a weak spatial correlation of SGRB locations with star-formation activity within their host galaxies.”
• A NEW POPULATION OF ULTRA-LONG DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2013, background): “Astrometric constraints A crucial diagnostic as to the nature of any transient event is its location within its host galaxy (e.g., Bloom et al. 2002; Fruchter et al. 2006; Svensson et al. 2010b; Fong et al. 2010; Anderson & James 2009).”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. VII. Properties of the Host Galaxy and Constraints on the Merger Timescale (2017, background): “Similarly, the observed locations of short GRBs within their hosts provides constraints on natal kicks and the possibility of globular clusters as formation sites (Fong et al. 2010; Church et al. 2011; Fong & Berger 2013).”
• The long-term evolution of neutron star merger remnants { II. Radioactively powered transients (2013, background): “Further evidence comes from the location of some sGRBs within elliptical galaxies which harbor very little star formation and from the location of sGRBs with respect to their host galaxies (Berger 2009, 2010; Fong et al. 2010, 2013).”
• THE LOCATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AS EVIDENCE FOR COMPACT OBJECT BINARY PROGENITORS (2013, methodology): “We investigate these effects using the host-normalized offsets from this work and Fong et al. (2010) in conjuncion with inferred stellar masses and stellar population ages from Leibler & Berger (2010).”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “The host galaxy data, on the other hand, suggest that contamination of massive star GRBs in the short GRB sample may not be large (Fong et al., 2010; Berger, 2014).”
• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, methodology): “…(Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Barthelmy et al. 2005; Berger et al. 2005), to have a large offset from the center of the host galaxy (e.g. Fox et al. 2005; Fong et al. 2010), and to have no evidence of an associated supernova (Kann et al. 2011, Berger 2014 and references therein).”