Closing in on a Short-Hard Burst Progenitor: Constraints from Early-Time Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy of a Possible Host Galaxy of GRB 050509b

By J. Bloom, J. Xavier Prochaska, D. Pooley, C. Blake, R. Foley, S. Jha, E. Ramirez-Ruiz, J. Granot, A. Filippenko, S. Sigurdsson and 18 more. 2005

260 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The localization of the short-duration, hard-spectrum gamma-ray burst GRB 050509b by the Swift satellite was a watershed event. We report the discovery of the probable host galaxy, a bright elliptical galaxy at z = 0.2248. This is the first known redshift and host of a short-hard GRB and shows that at least some short-hard GRBs are cosmological in origin. We began imaging the GRB field 8 minutes after the burst and continued for 8 days. We present a reanalysis of the XRT afterglow and report the absolute position of the GRB. Based on positional coincidences, the GRB and the elliptical are likely to be physically related, unlike any known connection between a long-duration GRB and an early-type galaxy. Similarly unique, GRB 050509b likely also originated from within a rich cluster of galaxies with detectable diffuse X-ray emission. We demonstrate that while the burst was underluminous, the ratio of the blast wave energy to the γ-ray energy is consistent with that of long-duration GRBs. Based on this analysis, on the location of the GRB (40 ± 13 kpc from the putative host), on the galaxy type (elliptical), and the lack of a coincident supernova, we suggest that there is now observational support for the hypothesis that short-hard bursts arise during the merger of a compact binary. We limit the properties of any Li-Paczyński "minisupernova" that is predicted to arise on ~1 day timescales. Other progenitor models are still viable, and new Swift bursts will undoubtedly help to further clarify the progenitor picture.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/afa0355ed916d6693cd19830b410a8cf130ed58a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. B. Metzger
4. E. Quataert
5. D. Kasen
6. E. Nakar
7. Pawan Kumar
8. T. Thompson

In Instrumentation

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Liang
3. E. Berger
4. B. Metzger
5. F. Mannucci
6. A. Filippenko
7. E. Quataert
8. T. Thompson

Citations in the corpus

• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, background): “Deep supernova searches have been performed, but with negative results (e.g., for GRB 050509B, Bloom et al. 2006a; GRB 050709, Fox etal.”
• Making a Short Gamma-Ray Burst from a Long One: Implications for the Nature of GRB 060614 (2006, unknown): “(Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Barthelmy et al. 2005a; Berger et al. 2005).”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “Table A2 Short GRB Optical/near-IR afterglow catalog GRB δt Telescope Instrument Filter Exposure Time Fν σ References (hr) (s) (µJy) (µJy) 050202 12.6 Mount John MOA R 900 < 42.89 Castro-Tirado et al. (2005) 050509B 2.1 WIYN OPTIC r 600 < 0.75 Bloom et al. (2006) 050709 34.0 Danish tel.”
• THE MISSING LINK: MERGING NEUTRON STARS NATURALLY PRODUCE JET-LIKE STRUCTURES AND CAN POWER SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2011, background): “…of SGRBs, Eγ,iso, spans a wide range, from (2.7 ± 1) × 1048 erg (in the observed energy range 15 − 350 keV) for GRB 050509B at a redshift of z = 0.225 (Bloom et al. 2006), up to (1.08 ± 0.06) × 1053 erg (in the observed energy range 10 keV – 30 GeV) for GRB 090510 at z = 0.903 (Ackermann et…”
• Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2013, methodology): “Deep follow-up optical observations revealed no afterglow emission, but instead uncovered a massive elliptical galaxy at z= 0.225 near the X-ray error circle, with a chance coincidence probability of∼ 10−3 (Castro-Tirado et al. 2005, Gehrels et al. 2005, Bloom et al. 2006).”
• DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE GALAXIES HOSTING SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2013, background): “…discoveries led to associations with both elliptical (Berger et al. 2005; Castro-Tirado et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005a; Bloom et al. 2006) and star-forming (Fox et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005b; Soderberg et al. 2006; Grupe et al. 2006; Burrows et al. 2006) host…”
• Short-duration gamma-ray bursts with extended emission from protomagnetar spin-down (2007, background): “On the other hand, short GRBs have now been localized to both early and late-type host galaxies of moderate redshift (Barthelmy et al. 2005; Berger et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006), indicating a more evolved progenitor population.”
• GRB 080503: IMPLICATIONS OF A NAKED SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST DOMINATED BY EXTENDED EMISSION (2008, background): “Current observational limits (Bloom et al. 2006; Hjorth et al. 2005a; Castro-Tirado et al. 2005; Kann et al. 2008) indicate that any supernova-like event accompanying an SGRB would have to be over 50 times fainter (at peak) than normal Type Ia SNe or Type Ic hypernovae, 5 times fainter than the…”
• The Early X-Ray Emission from GRBs (2006, background): “The data for the first short bursts detected by Swift (Gehrels et al. 2005; Barthelmy et al. 2005b; Hjorth et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006) strongly support the idea that the gamma-ray emission seen from short GRBs arises from a jet powered by a merger of two compact objects, most likely two neutron…”
• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, background): “…of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia with nearby early-type galaxies with little star formation (Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Barthelmy et al. 2005; Berger et al. 2005), to have a large offset from the center of the host galaxy (e.g. Fox et al. 2005; Fong…”
• RADIATIVE TRANSFER SIMULATIONS OF NEUTRON STAR MERGER EJECTA (2013, background): “For the original data, see Gehrels et al. (2005), Hjorth et al. (2005a), Castro-Tirado et al. (2005), Bersier et al. (2005), and Bloom et al. (2006) for GRB 050509B and Rowlinson et al. (2010) for GRB 080905A.”
• DISCERNING THE PHYSICAL ORIGINS OF COSMOLOGICAL GAMMA-RAY BURSTS BASED ON MULTIPLE OBSERVATIONAL CRITERIA: THE CASES OF z = 6.7 GRB 080913, z = 8.2 GRB 090423, AND SOME SHORT/HARD GRBs (2009, background): “At least a few bursts were discovered to be associated with galaxies with a very low star forming rate (Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Barthelmy et al. Physical origins of GRBs 5 2005a; Berger et al. 2005), which point towards a nonmassive-star origin of the bursts, likely due to mergers…”
• The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts (2010, result): “This model is consistent with the host galaxy demographics, and the lack of a bright supernova, associated with short GRBs (e.g. Bloom et al. 2006; Berger et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005; Perley et al. 2009; Berger 2010; Fong et al. 2010).”