The afterglow of GRB 050709 and the nature of the short-hard γ-ray bursts

By D. Fox, D. Frail, P. Price, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, E. Berger, T. Piran, A. Soderberg, S. Cenko, P. B. Cameron, A. Gal-yam and 26 more. Nature, 2005

415 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The final chapter in the long-standing mystery of the γ-ray bursts (GRBs) centres on the origin of the short-hard class of bursts, which are suspected on theoretical grounds to result from the coalescence of neutron-star or black-hole binary systems. Numerous searches for the afterglows of short-hard bursts have been made, galvanized by the revolution in our understanding of long-duration GRBs that followed the discovery in 1997 of their broadband (X-ray, optical and radio) afterglow emission. Here we present the discovery of the X-ray afterglow of a short-hard burst, GRB 050709, whose accurate position allows us to associate it unambiguously with a star-forming galaxy at redshift z = 0.160, and whose optical lightcurve definitively excludes a supernova association. Together with results from three other recent short-hard bursts, this suggests that short-hard bursts release much less energy than the long-duration GRBs. Models requiring young stellar populations, such as magnetars and collapsars, are ruled out, while coalescing degenerate binaries remain the most promising progenitor candidates.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b2a609dc1e165d55bc520491c6f238eb478290de

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

Citations in the corpus

• Fallback accretion in the aftermath of a compact binary merger (2006, background): “…confirmed the longheld suspicion that short GRBs have a different central engine than long bursts: they occur at systematically lower redshifts (Fox et al. 2005)1, in galaxies with (Hjorth et al. 2005) and without star formation (Berger et al. 2005; Barthelmy et al. 2005), the emitted…”
• LIGO: The laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (2006, background): “Such systems are considered likely progenitors of short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) [60].”
• The rate, luminosity function and time delay of non-Collapsar short GRBs (2014, background): “…obscure until 2005 when the HETE-2 and Swift satellites detected the first sGRB afterglows from GRBs 050509b, 050709 and 050724 (Berger et al. 2005; Castro-Tirado et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005a,b; Prochaska et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Covino et al. 2006).”
• A novel explosive process is required for the γ-ray burst GRB 060614 (2006, background): “Note that while some evolution in the temporal and spectral properties of this GRB were observed, the emission remained highly variable and relatively hard for tens of seconds, unlike the situation observed for a few short bursts with long, soft “tails”.(10,7) This indicates sustained activity of an”
• RADIATIVE TRANSFER SIMULATIONS OF NEUTRON STAR MERGER EJECTA (2013, background): “Although extensive searches have been performed for relatively nearby short GRBs, no such extra component has been detected (e.g., Fox et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005b, 2005a; Perley et al. 2009; Rowlinson et al. 2010; Kocevski et al. 2010).”
• The Ep,i–Eiso correlation in gamma-ray bursts: updated observational status, re-analysis and main implications (2006, background): “In addition, they also predict a weak afterglow emission, as recently observed (Fox et al. 2005), because of the cleaner and lower density circum–burst medium with respect to that predicted by the hypernova scenarios for long GRBs, which would cause a very inefficient external shock.”
• IDENTIFYING ELUSIVE ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE MERGERS: AN END-TO-END SIMULATION (2012, background): “The hypothesis has been further supported by around forty SGRB observations triggered by the Swift satellite and followedup by rapid multiwavelength observations (e.g. Berger et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Berger 2011).”
• The Afterglow, Energetics, and Host Galaxy of the Short-Hard Gamma-Ray Burst 051221a (2006, methodology): “In addition, only GRBs 050709 and 050724 have broad-band afterglow coverage which allowed a determination of the energy release and circumburst density, and provided evidence for ejecta collimation (Berger et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Panaitescu 2006).”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “…(GHz) (µJy) (µJy) 050202 0.52 VLA 4.86 < 120 Frail & Soderberg (2005) 050509B 0.49 WSRT 4.86 < 66 van der Horst et al. (2005) 050709 1.6 VLA 8.46 < 115 Fox et al. (2005) 2.5 VLA 8.46 < 114 4.5 VLA 8.46 < 74 7.5 VLA 8.46 < 40 050724A 0.57 VLA 8.46 173 30 Berger et al. (2005) 1.68 VLA 8.46 465 29…”
• THE MISSING LINK: MERGING NEUTRON STARS NATURALLY PRODUCE JET-LIKE STRUCTURES AND CAN POWER SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2011, result): “The qualitative scenario described above is generally supported by the association of SGRBs with old stellar populations, distinct from the young massive star associations for long GRBs (Fox et al. 2005; Prochaska et al. 2006).”
• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, background): “…(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 et al. 2010), and to have no evidence of an associated supernova (Kann et al. 2011, Berger 2014 and references therein).”
• 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): “Prompt localizations and deep afterglow searches for a handful of short GRBs (Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Fox et al. 2005; Villasenor et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005a; Barthelmy et al. 2005a; Berger et al. 2005) suggest that some of them are associated with nearby earlytype galaxies…”
• Testing the Curvature Effect and Internal Origin of Gamma-Ray Burst Prompt Emissions and X-Ray Flares with Swift Data (2006, background): “The successful launch and operation of the Swift mission (Gehrels et al. 2004) have led to several important discoveries (e.g. Tagliaferri et al. 2005; Burrows et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Barthelmy et al. 2005; Roming et al. 2006; Cusumano et al. 2006a).”
• Short Gamma-Ray Bursts with Extended Emission (2006, background): “Thus the major question concerning the distance scale for short bursts is qualitatively answered, the redshifts for these bursts being z = 0.16, 0.226, 0.258, and 1.8 (Fox et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Barthelmy et al. 2005a; Gladders & Berger 2005).”
• A Study of Compact Object Mergers as Short Gamma-Ray Burst Progenitors (2006, background): “The bursts energy is assumed to be E = 5 × 1049 erg, given the observed values of Eγ ∼ 5 × 10 48 erg or less (e.g. Fox et al. 2005), and for a typical efficiency of conversion of total energy into γ-rays ηγ ∼ 0.1.”
• SHORT VERSUS LONG AND COLLAPSARS VERSUS NON-COLLAPSARS: A QUANTITATIVE CLASSIFICATION OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2012, background): “…center and within high star-forming regions (Fruchter et al. 2006), differs from the position distribution of SGRBs within their hosts, which is more diffuse and with no apparent association with star formation (Barthelmy et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Nakar 2007; Berger 2009).”