On the Lyalpha emission from gamma-ray burst host galaxies: Evidence for low metallicities

By Johan Peter Uldall Fynbo, P. Jakobsson, P. Møller, J. Hjorth, B. Thomsen, M. Andersen, A. Fruchter, J. Gorosabel, S. Holland, C. Ledoux and 4 more. 2003

133 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on the results of a search for Ly emission from the host galaxy of the z= 2:140 GRB 011211 and other galaxies in its surrounding field. We detect Ly emission from the host as well as from six other galaxies in the field. The restframe equivalent width of the Ly line from the GRB 011211 host is about 21 A. This is the fifth detection of Ly emission out of five possible detections from GRB host galaxies, strongly indicating that GRB hosts, at least at high redshifts, are Ly emitters. This is intriguing as only 25% of the Lyman-Break selected galaxies at similar redshifts have Ly emission lines with restframe equivalent width larger than 20 A. Possible explanations are i) a preference for GRB progenitors to be metal-poor as expected in the collapsar model, ii) an optical afterglow selection bias against dusty hosts, and iii) a higher fraction of Ly emitters at the faint end of the luminosity function for high- z galaxies. Of these, the current evidence seems to favour i).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Claims that long GRB-hosts are relatively metal poor have been made (e.g. Fynbo et al., 2003; Prochaska et al., 2004; Fruchter et al., 2006).”
• The SEDs and host galaxies of the dustiest GRB afterglows (2011, background): “…stars, and whether they Article published by EDP Sciences A108, page 1 of 17 preferentially occur in low-metallicity environments remains a much debated issue (e.g., Le Floc’h et al. 2003; Fynbo et al. 2003; Tanvir et al. 2004; Fruchter et al. 2006; Kocevski et al. 2009; Campisi et al. 2011).”
• Revealing the High-Redshift Star Formation Rate with Gamma-Ray Bursts (2008, background): “Since GRBs are observed to favor subluminous host galaxies (Fynbo et al. 2003; Le Floc’h et al. 2003; Fruchter et al. 2006), they may be probing such faint galaxies.”
• THE OPTICALLY UNBIASED GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST (TOUGH) SURVEY. I. SURVEY DESIGN AND CATALOGS (2012, background): “…are Lyman break galaxies (LBGs; Steidel et al. 2003), sub-mm galaxies (SMGs; e.g., Barger et al. 2000; Blain et al. 2002), Lyα emitters (LAEs; e.g., Fynbo et al. 2003b, 2005; Sawicki & Thompson 2006), distant red galaxies (DRGs; Daddi et al. 2004), damped Lyα absorbers (DLAs; Møller et al. 2002;…”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2009, background): “Surveys of GRB host galaxies in the pre-Swift era (Le Floc’h et al. 2003, Fynbo et al. 2003) necessarily focused on the host galaxies of long-duration bursts.”
• Binary star progenitors of long gamma-ray bursts (2007, background): “The recent realization that long gamma-ray bursts may have a bias towards low metallicity (e.g., Fynbo et al. 2003; Fruchter et al. 2006) may change the situation: rather than being exotic, GRBs may simply represent massive low-metallicity stars – which locally are much rarer than O stars of solar…”
• GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, background): “In line with this picture were Lyα properties (Fynbo et al. 2003; Milvang-Jensen et al. 2012) and early measurements of sub-solar GRB host metallicities (e.g., Prochaska et al. 2004; Gorosabel et al. 2005; Sollerman et al. 2005).”
• Evolution in the properties of Lyman-α emitters from redshifts z ~ 3 to z ~ 2 (2008, background): “(2001), Fynbo et al. (2002, 2003a, 2003b), Francis et al. (2004) and Venemans et al. (2007).”
• CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, background): “…and have low luminosities, both in the nearby universe (e.g., Prochaska et al. 2004; Sollerman et al. 2005; Modjaz et al. 2006; Stanek et al. 2006; Wiersema et al. 2007) and at cosmological distances (e.g., Fruchter et al. 1999, 2006; Le Floc’h et al. 2003; Fynbo et al. 2003; Savaglio et al. 2009).”
• UV star-formation rates of GRB host galaxies (2004, background): “Some GRB hosts are found to be Lymanα emitters indicating that these galaxies contain only little dust or have low metallicities (Fynbo et al. 2003).”
• The metallicity of the long GRB hosts and the fundamental metallicity relation of low-mass galaxies (2010, background): “In this view, GRBs may occur preferentially in galaxies with low-metallicity (Fynbo et al. 2003; Prochaska et al. 2004; Fruchter et al. 2006; Stanek et al. 2006), although we have to stress that low-metallicity progenitors do not necessarily imply low-metallicity host galaxies.”
• Signatures of Extragalactic Dust in Pre-Swift GRB Afterglows (2005, background): “This result is expected from studies of GRB host galaxies, which indicate that most hosts are lowmetallicity galaxies, as they are Ly emitters, blue, and subluminous (e.g., Fynbo et al. 2003; Le Floc’h et al. 2003; Jakobsson et al. 2005b).”
• On the Collapsar Model of Long Gamma-Ray Bursts:Constraints from Cosmic Metallicity Evolution (2005, background): “While indirect evidence from gamma-ray burst host galaxies is pointing towards low metallicity (Fynbo et al. 2003; Conselice et al. 2005; Fruchter et al. 2005), direct metallicity determinations yield sub-solar values down to 1/100th of the solar metallicity (Gorosabel et al. 2005; Chen et al.…”
• Single star progenitors of long gamma-ray bursts - I. Model grids and redshift dependent GRB rate (2006, background): “Most GRB host galaxies appear to have sub-solar metallicity, even down to Z ' Z /100 (e.g. Fynbo et al. 2003; Conselice et al. 2005; Gorosabel et al. 2005; Chen et al. 2005; Starling et al. 2005; Fruchter et al. 2006; Fynbo et al. 2006; Stanek et al. 2006; Mirabal et al. 2006; Wiersema et al. 2006).”
• The Supernova Gamma-Ray Burst Connection (2006, background): “GRBs will therefore be favored in regions of low metallicity (MacFadyen and Woosley, 1999) as has been observed in several cases (Fynbo et al., 2003; Prochaska et al., 2004b; Gorosabel et al., 2005b; Sollerman et al., 2005).”