CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION

By Brant Robertson, Richard S. Ellis. 2011

173 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The contemporary discoveries of galaxies and gamma ray bursts (GRBs) at high redshift have supplied the first direct information on star formation when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. The probable origin of long duration GRBs in the deaths of massive stars would link the universal GRB rate to the redshift-dependent star formation rate (SFR) density, although exactly how is currently unknown. As the most distant GRBs and star-forming galaxies probe the reionization epoch, the potential reward of understanding the redshift-dependent ratio Ψ(z) of the GRB rate to SFR is significant and includes addressing fundamental questions such as incompleteness in rest-frame UV surveys for determining the SFR at high redshift and time variations in the stellar initial mass function. Using an extensive sample of 112 GRBs above a fixed luminosity limit drawn from the Second Swift Burst Alert Telescope catalog and accounting for uncertainty in their redshift distribution by considering the contribution of “dark” GRBs, we compare the cumulative redshift distribution N(< z) of GRBs with the star formation density measured from UV-selected galaxies over 0 < z <4. Strong evolution (e.g., Ψ(z)∝(1 + z)1.5) is disfavored (Kolmogorov–Smirnov test P < 0.07). We show that more modest evolution (e.g., Ψ(z)∝(1 + z)0.5) is consistent with the data (P ≈ 0.9) and can be readily explained if GRBs occur primarily in low-metallicity galaxies which are proportionally more numerous at earlier times. If such trends continue beyond z ≃ 4, we find that the discovery rate of distant GRBs implies an SFR density much higher than that inferred from UV-selected galaxies. While some previous studies of the GRB-SFR connection have concluded that GRB-inferred star formation at high redshift would be sufficient to maintain cosmic reionization over 6 4 measured from rest-frame optical surveys. The resolution of this important disagreement is currently unclear, and the GRB production rate at early times is likely more complex than a simple function of SFR and progenitor metallicity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5920deb18d268f408ad9720f3f25883d2661e3dd

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. M. Franx
2. R. Bouwens
3. P. V. van Dokkum
4. G. Illingworth
5. I. Labbé
6. P. Oesch
7. J. Dunlop
8. Richard S. Ellis

Citations in the corpus

• THE AFTERGLOW OF GRB 130427A FROM 1 TO 1016 GHz (2013, background): “Robertson & Ellis 2012; cf. Savaglio et al. 2009; Mannucci et al. 2011; Elliott et al. 2012) also decreases the local rate.”
• GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, background): “…Chary et al. 2007; Chen et al. 2009; Tanvir et al. 2012), faintest luminosities (e.g., Vreeswijk et al. 2001; Trenti et al. 2012), as well as the global star formation rate (SFR) density up to the epoch of re-ionization (e.g., Kistler et al. 2009; Robertson & Ellis 2012; Elliott et al. 2012).”
• THE OPTICALLY UNBIASED GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST (TOUGH) SURVEY. I. SURVEY DESIGN AND CATALOGS (2012, background): “…determining the slope of the faint-end power-law part of the luminosity function is important in determining whether such galaxies constitute a major fraction of the star formation in the universe (Fynbo et al. 2001, 2002; Jakobsson et al. 2005, 2012; Robertson & Ellis 2012; Tanvir et al. 2012).”
• A COMPLETE SAMPLE OF BRIGHT SWIFT LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. I. SAMPLE PRESENTATION, LUMINOSITY FUNCTION AND EVOLUTION (2011, background): “…((e.g. Porciani & Madau 2001, Firmani et al. 2004, Guetta et al. 2005, Natarajan et al. 2005, Daigne et al. 2006, Salvaterra & Chincarini 2007, Salvaterra et al. 2009b, Butler et al. 2010, Wanderman & Piran 2010, Campisi et al. 2010, Qin et al. 2010, Virgili et al. 2011, Robertson & Ellis 2012).”
• PROBING THE DAWN OF GALAXIES AT z ∼ 9–12: NEW CONSTRAINTS FROM HUDF12/XDF AND CANDELS DATA (2013, background): “These measurements can provide additional constraints on the total star-formation rate density in the very early universe, since GRB rates are thought to be an unbiased tracer of the total star-formation rate density (e.g. Kistler et al. 2009; Trenti et al. 2012; Robertson & Ellis 2012).”
• CLASH: THREE STRONGLY LENSED IMAGES OF A CANDIDATE z ≈ 11 GALAXY (2012, background): “However, Robertson & Ellis (2012) suggest such a sharp drop off would be in tension with z 4 GRB rates as correlated with star formation rate density and extrapolated to higher redshifts.”
• Herschel PEP/HerMES: the redshift evolution (0 ≤ z ≤ 4) of dust attenuation and of the total (UV+IR) star formation rate density (2013, background): “Additionaly, it remains quite puzzling that GRB-based analyses suggest a much shallower decrease (Kistler et al.(2009), Robertson & Ellis(2012)) than Lyman break galaxies.”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Detailed studies of this high-z excess effect have been carried out in the last several years (e.g. Kistler et al., 2008; Campisi et al., 2010; Qin et al., 2010; Virgili et al., 2011; Robertson and Ellis, 2012; Trenti et al., 2013).”