DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE GALAXIES HOSTING SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

By W. Fong, E. Berger, Ryan Chornock, Raffaella Margutti, A. Levan, N. Tanvir, R. Tunnicliffe, I. Czekala, D. Fox, D. Perley and 10 more. 2013

135 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present observations of the afterglows and host galaxies of three short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs): 100625A, 101219A, and 110112A. We find that GRB 100625A occurred in a z = 0.452 early-type galaxy with a stellar mass of ≈4.6 × 109 M☉ and a stellar population age of ≈0.7 Gyr, and GRB 101219A originated in a star-forming galaxy at z = 0.718 with a stellar mass of ≈1.4 × 109 M☉, a star formation rate of ≈16 M☉ yr−1, and a stellar population age of ≈50 Myr. We also report the discovery of the optical afterglow of GRB 110112A, which lacks a coincident host galaxy to i ≳ 26 mag, and we cannot conclusively identify any field galaxy as a possible host. From afterglow modeling, the bursts have inferred circumburst densities of ≈10−4–1 cm−3 and isotropic-equivalent gamma-ray and kinetic energies of ≈1050–1051 erg. These three events highlight the diversity of galactic environments that host short GRBs. To quantify this diversity, we use the sample of 36 Swift short GRBs with robust associations to an environment (∼1/2 of 68 short bursts detected by Swift to 2012 May) and classify bursts originating from four types of environments: late-type (≈50%), early-type (≈15%), inconclusive (≈20%), and “host-less” (lacking a coincident host galaxy to limits of ≳ 26 mag; ≈15%). To find likely ranges for the true late- and early-type fractions, we assign each of the host-less bursts to either the late- or early-type category using probabilistic arguments and consider the scenario that all hosts in the inconclusive category are early-type galaxies to set an upper bound on the early-type fraction. We calculate most likely ranges for the late- and early-type fractions of ≈60%–80% and ≈20%–40%, respectively. We find no clear trend between gamma-ray duration and host type. We also find no change to the fractions when excluding events recently claimed as possible contaminants from the long GRB/collapsar population. Our reported demographics are consistent with a short GRB rate driven by both stellar mass and star formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c9f39117f2851d98a91d58873702de174b469e6

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. Pawan Kumar
5. E. Nakar
6. T. Piran
7. Oleg Korobkin
8. A. Pe’er

Citations in the corpus

• AN r-PROCESS KILONOVA ASSOCIATED WITH THE SHORT-HARD GRB 130603B (2013, background): “This evidence includes the location of some short GRBs in elliptical galaxies (Berger et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Fong et al. 2011, 2013); the absence of associated supernova (Hjorth et al. 2005a,b; Soderberg et al. 2006; Kocevski et al. 2010); the distribution of explosion…”
• Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger (2017, background): “…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 theoretically(Bagot et al. 1998; Fryer et al. 1999; Belczynski et al.…”
• THE LOCATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AS EVIDENCE FOR COMPACT OBJECT BINARY PROGENITORS (2013, background): “For the bursts with previously established hosts (Figure 1), we find Pcc(< δR)≈ 10−4 − 10−3, consistent with ground-based results (Fong et al. 2013); the next probable hosts have values at least one order of magnitude greater, with Pcc(< δR)≈ 0.02 − 0.30.”
• BRIGHT “MERGER-NOVA” FROM THE REMNANT OF A NEUTRON STAR BINARY MERGER: A SIGNATURE OF A NEWLY BORN, MASSIVE, MILLISECOND MAGNETAR (2013, background): “The brightest EM emission during the compact binary mergers is probably short-duration gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs; e.g. Gehrels et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Fong et al. 2013; cf. Virgili et al. 2011).”
• The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, design and expected performances (2017, background): “About 20% of well localized SGRBs (∼7% of the total number of SGRBs) have been classified as host-less (Fong et al., 2013).”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “…2.0×104 3.1×104 < 0.033 Evans et al. (2007a, 2009) 100625A 1.6×104 1.3×104 4.4×10−3 1.8×10−3 Fong et al. (2013) 9.0×104 4.6×104 < 8.2×10−3 Fong et al. (2013) 100628Aa +3.9×105 2.0×104 <5.9×104 This work 100702A 1.4×104 4.3×104 < 0.011 Evans et al. (2007a, 2009) 101219A 7.7×102 317 0.58 0.20 Fong…”
• Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2013, methodology): “The inferred opening angle isθ j ≈ 4− 8◦ (Fong et al. 2013).”
• GLADE: A galaxy catalogue for multimessenger searches in the advanced gravitational-wave detector era (2018, unknown): “Despite the lack of these parameters, this catalogue is an important source of infrared magnitudes, which can be used for estimating stellar masses of galaxies (Bell et al. 2003) and thus as an alternative tracer of BNS mergers (see e.g. Fong et al. 2013 and Hanna et al. 2014).”
• 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).”
• 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).”
• SYSTEMATICS OF DYNAMICAL MASS EJECTION, NUCLEOSYNTHESIS, AND RADIOACTIVELY POWERED ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNALS FROM NEUTRON-STAR MERGERS (2013, background): “Moreover, the circumburst densities affecting the signal brightness and length are uncertain, and low densities are likely to reduce the radio detectability (Berger et al. 2005; Soderberg et al. 2006; Metzger & Berger 2012; Fong et al. 2012, 2013).”
• The rate, luminosity function and time delay of non-Collapsar short GRBs (2014, background): “…have shown that the Swift sample of short (T90 < 2 s) bursts is contaminated by a significant fraction of short duration Collapsars (see however Fong et al. 2013, C© 2015 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society D ow nloaded from…”