Swift Identification of Dark Gamma-Ray Bursts

By P. Jakobsson, J. Hjorth, Johan Peter Uldall Fynbo, D. Watson, K. Pedersen, G. Björnsson, J. Gorosabel. 2004

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an optical flux versus X-ray flux diagram for all known gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) for which an X-ray afterglow has been detected. We propose an operational definition of dark bursts as those bursts that are optically subluminous with respect to the fireball model, i.e., that have an optical-to-X-ray spectral index βox < 0.5. Out of a sample of 52 GRBs, we identify five dark bursts. The definition and diagram serve as a simple and quick diagnostic tool for identifying dark GRBs based on limited information, particularly useful for early and objective identification of dark GRBs observed with the Swift satellite.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a41a4ecddf48ae76649f37375b91779ec899d7bc

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. B. Metzger
4. Xuefeng Wu
5. Z. Cano
6. Pawan Kumar
7. N. Smith
8. E. Nakar

In Atmospheric Science

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. Z. Cano
4. N. Tanvir
5. Joshua S. Bloom
6. A. Filippenko
7. A. Levan
8. M. Dopita

Citations in the corpus

• A POPULATION OF MASSIVE, LUMINOUS GALAXIES HOSTING HEAVILY DUST-OBSCURED GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE USE OF GRBs AS TRACERS OF COSMIC STAR FORMATION (2013, methodology): “…interpretations for most well-studied pre-Swift dark GRBs (Taylor et al. 1998; Djorgovski et al. 2001; Klose et al. 2003; Gorosabel et al. 2003; Jakobsson et al. 2004) and, more recently, for the the large majority of dark GRBs within unbiased samples of Swift events as well (Cenko et al.…”
• THE AFTERGLOW OF GRB 130427A FROM 1 TO 1016 GHz (2013, result): “(By comparison to Jakobsson et al. 2004, it is also brighter than any preSwift X-ray afterglow.)”
• THE COSMIC RATE, LUMINOSITY FUNCTION, AND INTRINSIC CORRELATIONS OF LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2009, background): “However, it remains true in the Swift era that 25–50% of all GRBs exhibit suppressed optical flux relative to X-ray flux or are undetected (“dark” GRBs; e.g., Jakobsson et al. 2004; Melandri et al. 2008; Cenko et al. 2009a; Zheng et al. 2009) despite deep followup.”
• LOW-RESOLUTION SPECTROSCOPY OF GAMMA-RAY BURST OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS: BIASES IN THE SWIFT SAMPLE AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ABSORBERS (2009, background): “The dark burst diagram (Fopt vs. FX), rst presented in Jakobsson et al. (2004)), for thestatisti al sample.”
• THE OPTICALLY UNBIASED GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST (TOUGH) SURVEY. I. SURVEY DESIGN AND CATALOGS (2012, background): “…systematic incompleteness biases due to dust obscuration, i.e., the so-called dark burst problem (Fynbo et al. 2001, 2009; De Pasquale et al. 2003; Jakobsson et al. 2004; Perley et al. 2009; Krühler et al. 2011; Svensson et al. 2012; Rossi et al. 2012; Melandri et al. 2012), has also been…”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, methodology): “Jakobsson et al. (2004) and Rol et al. (2005) used the criterion that a burst is “darker” than it is expected to be (using spectral extrapolation from the X-rayb nd for example) to define a dark burst.”
• Signatures of Extragalactic Dust in Pre-Swift GRB Afterglows (2005, background): “…2001), GRB 000926 (Fynbo et al. 2001b), GRB 010222 (Lee et al. 2001), GRB 020813 (Savaglio & Fall 2004), GRB 021004 (Holland et al. 2003), GRB 030226 (Klose et al. 2004), GRB 030429 (Jakobsson et al. 2004a), and XRF 030723 (Fynbo et al. 2004), our study puts this conclusion on a statistical basis.”
• GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, background): “The definition of dark GRBs is not unique (Jakobsson et al. 2004; van der Horst et al. 2009), depends on the physics of the GRB shockwave and on the time and filter when the observations are performed (Greiner et al. 2011).”
• Spectroscopy of superluminous supernova host galaxies. A preference of hydrogen-poor events for extreme emission line galaxies (2014, background): “‘Dark’ GRBs (e.g. Jakobsson et al. 2004) are GRBs with a faint (or no) optical afterglow with respect to X-rays, and a big fraction of those are attributed to dust extinction.”
• Gamma-ray burst afterglows (2006, background): “Generally, in the internal shock model the observed time sequence reflects the time sequence in the central engine (Kobayashi et al. 1997). As a result, the observed X-ray flares (10 − 10)s after the prompt emission must imply that the central engine restarts during this time span, say, as late as d”
• A RADIO-SELECTED SAMPLE OF GAMMA-RAY BURST AFTERGLOWS (2011, unknown): “…(27) Hjorth & Bloom 2011; (28) Connaughton et al. 1997; (29) Smith et al. 1997a; (30) Gandolfi et al. 1999; (31) Jakobsson et al. 2004; (32) Kann et al. 2011; (33) Kann et al. 2010; (34) Kuin et al. 2009; (35) Lazzati et al. 2001; (36) Liang et al. 2007; (37)…”
• The SEDs and host galaxies of the dustiest GRB afterglows (2011, background): “While observationally challenging, the requirement of a dust measurement has several obvious advantages over a selection based on the optical-to-X-ray flux ratio (βoX, see e.g., Jakobsson et al. 2004; Rol et al. 2005; van der Horst et al. 2009).”
• The nature of "dark" gamma-ray bursts (2010, methodology): “In order to determine which of our bursts would have been classified as dark bursts according to the Jakobsson et al. (2004) definition, we also estimateβOX (Fig.”
• THE HOST GALAXIES OF SWIFT DARK GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: OBSERVATIONAL CONSTRAINTS ON HIGHLY OBSCURED AND VERY HIGH REDSHIFT GRBs (2009, methodology): “…in the study of dark bursts has been the progression from a wholly observational definition of darkness to the physically motivated βOX criterion of Jakobsson et al. (2004a), who define a dark burst on the basis of the flux ratio between X-ray and optical bandpasses in the afterglow at 11 hr…”
• A PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFT OF z ∼ 9.4 FOR GRB 090429B (2011, background): “Nonetheless, the implied X-ray to optical spectral slope of βOX < 0.1 implied suppression of the optical flux relative to the X-ray, rendering GRB 090429B a “dark” burst under the definitions of Jakobsson et al. (2004) and van der Horst et al. (2009).”