THE LOCATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AS EVIDENCE FOR COMPACT OBJECT BINARY PROGENITORS

By W. Fong, E. Berger. 2013

198 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a detailed investigation of Hubble Space Telescope rest-frame UV/optical observations of 22 short gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies and sub-galactic environments. Utilizing the high angular resolution and depth of HST we characterize the host galaxy morphologies, measure precise projected physical and host-normalized offsets between the bursts and host centers, and calculate the locations of the bursts with respect to their host light distributions (rest-frame UV and optical). We calculate a median short GRB projected physical offset of 4.5 kpc, about 3.5 times larger than that for long GRBs, and find that ≈25% of short GRBs have offsets of ≳ 10 kpc. When compared to their host sizes, the median offset is 1.5 half-light radii (re), about 1.5 times larger than the values for long GRBs, core-collapse supernovae, and Type Ia supernovae. In addition, ≈20% of short GRBs having offsets of ≳ 5re, and only ≈25% are located within 1re. We further find that short GRBs severely under-represent their hosts' rest-frame optical and UV light, with ≈30%–45% of the bursts located in regions of their host galaxies that have no detectable stellar light, and ≈55% in the regions with no UV light. Therefore, short GRBs do not occur in regions of star formation or even stellar mass. This demonstrates that the progenitor systems of short GRBs must migrate from their birth sites to their eventual explosion sites, a signature of kicks in compact object binary systems. Utilizing the full sample of offsets, we estimate natal kick velocities of ≈20–140 km s−1. These independent lines of evidence provide the strongest support to date that short GRBs result from the merger of compact object binaries (NS–NS/NS–BH).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5756e707e722cc1208b07fad98b3b7995edca2a2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. Bing Zhang
3. E. Berger
4. E. Quataert
5. P. Hopkins
6. C. Faucher-Giguére
7. D. Keres̆
8. L. Hernquist

Citations in the corpus

• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, methodology): “It has been found that short GRBs typically have a large offset from their host galaxies (Fong et al. 2010; Fong & Berger 2013; Berger 2014), so that the local ISM density may be much lower than that of long GRBs (e.g. Fan et al. 2005; Zhang et al. 2009; Kann et al. 2011).”
• Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger (2017, background): “…et al. 1998; Fryer et al. 1999; Belczynski et al. 2002); (ii) a broad distribution of spatial offsets from host-galaxy centers(Berger 2010; 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 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): “…overall host light distribution, we calculate the fraction of total galaxy light in pixels fainter than the optical counterpart position (“fractional flux”; Fruchter et al. 2006; Fong & Berger 2013; Blanchard et al. 2016); this is a commonly measured quantity in the context of GRB host galaxies.”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “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,…”
• 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…”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, background): “5–75 kpc away, median of 5 kpc [407, 408]), and a weak spatial correlation of SGRB locations with star-formation activity within their host galaxies.”
• GLADE: A galaxy catalogue for multimessenger searches in the advanced gravitational-wave detector era (2018, background): “5 of Fong & Berger (2013).”
• Off-axis emission of short γ-ray bursts and the detectability of electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational-wave-detected binary mergers (2016, background): “Our hope of confirming the supposed association of SGRBs with NS binary mergers (Faber et al. 2006; Shibata & Taniguchi 2006; Fong & Berger 2013; Giacomazzo et al. 2013; Ruiz et al. 2016) is therefore tied to our capability of modelling and detecting the off-axis emission of such events (Metzger &…”
• Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “Fong & Berger (2013) found a median sGRB projected physical offset of 4.5 kpc.”
• Impact of ejecta morphology and composition on the electromagnetic signatures of neutron star mergers (2017, background): “…korobkin@lanl.gov γ-ray bursts (GRBs, see Popham et al. 1999; Fryer et al. 1999; Bloom et al. 1999; Piran 2005; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007; Nakar 2007; Fong & Berger 2013; Berger 2014), and it is very likely that advanced detector facilities such as AdLIGO (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration et al.…”
• Follow Up of GW170817 and Its Electromagnetic Counterpart by Australian-Led Observing Programmes (2017, background): “Previous sGRB hosts with possible kilonovae are often low-mass, blue star-forming galaxies (Tanvir et al. 2013; Fong & Berger 2013), though 20–40% of sGRBs occur in early-type galaxies (Fong et al. 2013).”
• Optical and X-ray emission from stable millisecond magnetars formed from the merger of binary neutron stars (2013, background): “…luminosity is likely to be much higher in this case than in a standard kilonova, this would place the burst at a higher redshift more consistent with the absence of a host galaxy (although this is hardly a ironclad argument, as some GRBs can occur far outside their hosts; e.g., Fong & Berger 2013).”
• RAPIDLY EVOLVING AND LUMINOUS TRANSIENTS FROM PAN-STARRS1 (2014, background): “This is in contrast to the hosts of LGRBs and type I SLSN, both of which have been shown to obey a relation in the mass-metallicity plane that is offset below the bulk of star-forming galaxies (Levesque et al. 2010b; Lunnan et al. 2014).”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. V. Rising X-Ray Emission from an Off-axis Jet (2017, background): “…environments and properties of emission of SGRBs in the past decade provided solid indirect evidence of the association of SGRBs with BNS mergers (Fong & Berger 2013; Berger 2014; Fong et al. 2015), thus motivating our search for observational signatures of on-axis and off-axis jets in GW170817.”