A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES

By W. Fong, E. Berger, Raffaella Margutti, B. Zauderer. 2015

316 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a comprehensive catalog and analysis of broadband afterglow observations for 103 short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), comprised of all short GRBs from 2004 November to 2015 March with prompt follow-up observations in the X-ray, optical, near-infrared (NIR), and/or radio bands. These afterglow observations have uncovered 71 X-ray detections, 30 optical/NIR detections, and 4 radio detections. Employing the standard afterglow synchrotron model, we perform joint probability analyses for a subset of 38 short GRBs with well-sampled light curves to infer the burst isotropic-equivalent energies and circumburst densities. For this subset, we find median isotropic-equivalent γ-ray and kinetic energies of Eγ,iso ≈ 2 × 1051 erg, and EK,iso ≈ (1–3) × 1051 erg, respectively, depending on the values of the model input parameters. We further find that short GRBs occur in low-density environments, with a median density of n ≈ (3–15) × 10−3 cm−3, and that ≈80%–95% of bursts have densities of n ≲ 1 cm−3. We investigate trends between the circumburst densities and host galaxy properties, and find that events located at large projected offsets of ≳10 effective radii from their hosts exhibit particularly low densities of n ≲ 10−4 cm−3, consistent with an intergalactic medium-like environment. Using late-time afterglow data for 11 events, we find a median jet opening angle of θj = 16 ± 10°. We also calculate a median beaming factor of fb ≈ 0.04, leading to a beaming-corrected total energy release of Etrue ≈ 1.6 × 1050 erg. Furthermore, we calculate a beaming-corrected event rate of R true = 270 − 180 + 1580 ?> Gpc−3 yr−1, or ≈ 8 − 5 + 47 ?> yr−1 within a 200 Mpc volume, the Advanced LIGO/Virgo typical detection distance for NS–NS binaries.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/98efbae8e1c9e9d131bae707ced23d29daddf4de

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. Michela Mapelli
3. E. Berger
4. N. Giacobbo
5. P. Hopkins
6. E. Quataert
7. L. Hernquist
8. Bing Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• The Binary Neutron Star Event LIGO/Virgo GW170817 160 Days after Merger: Synchrotron Emission across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (2018, background): “As a comparison, classical cosmological Short Gamma-Ray Bursts (SGRBs) typically have Eγ,iso∼ 1050 − 1052 erg (Fong et al. 2015; Berger 2014).”
• Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “It should be noted that the luminosity function of sGRBs is fairly unknown and that the sGRB opening angles may well be smaller than estimated in Fong et al. (2015).”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. I. Discovery of the Optical Counterpart Using the Dark Energy Camera (2017, background): “…et al. 1989; Nakar 2007; Berger 2014), on- or off-axis afterglow emission from radio to X-rays (van Eerten & MacFadyen 2011; Coward et al. 2014; Fong et al. 2015; Lamb & Kobayashi 2016), optical/near-IR emission due to radioactive decay of r-process nuclei 71 Hubble and Carnegie-Dunlap Fellow.”
• The progenitors of compact-object binaries: impact of metallicity, common envelope and natal kicks (2018, unknown): “Model 1 predicts Rloc,BHB & 1000 Gpc−3 yr−1, which is substantially larger than the 90 per cent credible levels inferred from current LIGO-Virgo results, whereas model 2 predicts Rloc,BHB ∼ 30− 100 Gpc−3 yr−1, which is perfectly within the LIGO-Virgo 90 per cent credible interval.”
• The cosmic merger rate of neutron stars and black holes (2018, methodology): “Alternative observational estimates of the DNS merger rate are based either on the rate of short gamma-ray bursts (Coward et al. 2012; Petrillo et al. 2013; Siellez et al. 2014; Fong et al. 2015), or on kilonova observations (Jin et al. 2015), or on the properties of Galactic DNSs (Kim et al. 2015).”
• FERMI GBM OBSERVATIONS OF LIGO GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EVENT GW150914 (2016, background): “…23 http://heastro.phys.lsu.edu/gbm/ 24 http://gamma-ray.nsstc.nasa.gov/gbm/science/pulsars.html compact binary merger involving a neutron star is a short GRB. Berger (2014) provides a recent review of short GRBs and Fong et al. (2015) summarize what has been learned from observing their afterglows.”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. V. Rising X-Ray Emission from an Off-axis Jet (2017, methodology): “Observations of the 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 j”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. III. Optical and UV Spectra of a Blue Kilonova from Fast Polar Ejecta (2017, background): “…of short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) based on both theoretical viability (Eichler et al. 1989; Narayan et al. 1992) and observations of their X-ray, optical and radio afterglows (Berger 2014; Berger et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005; Soderberg et al. 2006; Fong et al. 2013, 2015).”
• A Decline in the X-Ray through Radio Emission from GW170817 Continues to Support an Off-axis Structured Jet (2018, background): “Several lines of evidence suggest that short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) are produced by binary neutron star mergers viewed on-axis (Berger 2014), and observations of SGRB afterglows have provided a measure of the kinetic energies, collimation angles, and circumbinary densities (Fong et al. 2015).”
• A Magnetar Origin for the Kilonova Ejecta in GW170817 (2018, background): “The isotropic kinetic energies of short GRB jets as inferred from their nonthermal afterglows are typically E 10 10iso,K 50 51» – erg (Nakar 2007; Berger 2014; Fong et al. 2015).”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. VI. Radio Constraints on a Relativistic Jet and Predictions for Late-time Emission from the Kilonova Ejecta (2017, background): “A decade of SGRB radio follow-up at GHz frequencies yielded four detections and multiple upper limits (Berger et al. 2005; Soderberg et al. 2006; Fong et al. 2014, 2015), providing tight constraints on the energetics and densities of the burst environments.”
• Off-axis emission of short γ-ray bursts and the detectability of electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational-wave-detected binary mergers (2016, background): “…1 Here and in the following we call binary NS a system in which at least one of the components is an NS, the other being either an NS or a BH. (Fong et al. 2015), the probability of detecting an on-axis burst is only ∼10 per cent.2 In other words, only 1 out of 10 NS binary mergers detected…”