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

By D. Perley, A. Levan, N. Tanvir, S. Cenko, Joshua S. Bloom, J. Hjorth, T. Kruehler, A. Filippenko, A. Fruchter, Johan Peter Uldall Fynbo and 6 more. 2013

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present observations and analysis of the host galaxies of 23 heavily dust-obscured gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Swift satellite during the years 2005–2009, representing all GRBs with an unambiguous host-frame extinction of AV > 1 mag from this period. Deep observations with Keck, Gemini, Very Large Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer successfully detect the host galaxies and establish spectroscopic or photometric redshifts for all 23 events, enabling us to provide measurements of the intrinsic host star formation rates, stellar masses, and mean extinctions. Compared to the hosts of unobscured GRBs at similar redshifts, we find that the hosts of dust-obscured GRBs are (on average) more massive by about an order of magnitude and also more rapidly star forming and dust obscured. While this demonstrates that GRBs populate all types of star-forming galaxies, including the most massive, luminous systems at z ≈ 2, at redshifts below 1.5 the overall GRB population continues to show a highly significant aversion to massive galaxies and a preference for low-mass systems relative to what would be expected given a purely star-formation-rate-selected galaxy sample. This supports the notion that the GRB rate is strongly dependent on metallicity, and may suggest that the most massive galaxies in the universe underwent a transition in their chemical properties ∼9 Gyr ago. We also conclude that, based on the absence of unobscured GRBs in massive galaxies and the absence of obscured GRBs in low-mass galaxies, the dust distributions of the lowest-mass and the highest-mass galaxies are relatively homogeneous, while intermediate-mass galaxies (∼109 M☉) have diverse internal properties.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba305de10fad83f359c25b3493737ee1e8125e82

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. B. Metzger
4. Pawan Kumar
5. A. Filippenko
6. Ryan Chornock
7. W. Fong
8. S. Smartt

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. Pawan Kumar
4. A. Filippenko
5. Ryan Chornock
6. S. Smartt
7. J. C. Wheeler
8. R. Kirshner

Citations in the corpus

• THE AFTERGLOW OF GRB 130427A FROM 1 TO 1016 GHz (2013, methodology): “Finally, we interpolate to the remaining filters (including u and z) by fitting a stellar population to the UV/optical/NIR photometry (using the same technique as in Perley et al. 2013) fixed at the GRB redshift and performing synthetic photometry in the remaining desired filters.”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, background): “Moreover, it was shown that LGRBs do not exclusively form in low-metallicity environments [328, 331, 334, 335], where the results of [296] are an excellent example of this notion.”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “For long GRBs, inferred values ofAhostV ≈ 0.5 mag are common, with a substantial fraction of events withAhostV & 1− 2.5 mag (Cenko et al. 2009; Perley et al. 2009a, 2013).”
• GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, methodology): “Data reduction and photometry follow the procedures established in Krühler et al. (2008) in the former case and is taken from the Keck GRB Host Survey (Perley et al. 2013a) in the latter case.”
• Spectroscopy of superluminous supernova host galaxies. A preference of hydrogen-poor events for extreme emission line galaxies (2014, background): “However, Perley et al. (2013) have shown that there still is a dearth of massive GRB hosts at low redshifts (z < 1.5) where our study is made, so this might also turn out to be the case for SLSNe.”
• HYDROGEN-POOR SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE AND LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS HAVE SIMILAR HOST GALAXIES (2013, background): “However, even when taking into account the LGRBs in heavily dust-obscured galaxies, the number of LGRBs in massive galaxies still falls short of what would be expected in a purely star formation-selected sample (Perley et al. 2013), suggesting that the LGRB rate is also a function of metallicity.”
• Swift J1112.2−8238: a candidate relativistic tidal disruption flare (2015, background): “If the emission mechanisms were similar to GRBs this would identify the counterpart of Swift J1112-8238 as a dark burst, and would imply significant extinction (Fynbo et al. 2009; Perley et al. 2013), the correction for which would make the afterglow the brightest seen.”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Nonetheless, some dark GRBs are found to be located in relatively metal-rich host galaxies (e.g. Holland et al., 2010; Perley et al., 2013b), suggesting that low metallicity may not be the critical condition to produce a GRB.”