Cosmological Aspects of Gamma-Ray Bursts: Luminosity Evolution and an Estimate of the Star Formation Rate at High Redshifts

By N. Lloyd-Ronning, Chris L. Fryer, E. Ramirez-Ruiz. 2001

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using 220 gamma-ray burst (GRB) redshifts and luminosities derived from the luminosity-variability relationship of Fenimore & Ramirez-Ruiz, we show that there exists a significant correlation between the GRB luminosity and redshift. In particular, we find that the evolution of the average luminosity can be parameterized as L ∝ (1 + z)1.4±~0.5, where z is the burst redshift. We discuss the possible reasons behind this evolution and compare it with that of other known sources that exhibit similar behavior. In addition, we use nonparametric statistical techniques to independently estimate the distributions of the luminosity and redshift of bursts, accounting for the evolution (in contrast to previous studies, which have assumed that the luminosity function is independent of redshift). We present these distributions and discuss their implications. Most significantly, we find a comoving rate density of GRBs that continues to increase to (1 + z) ≳ 10. From this estimate of the GRB rate density, we then use the population synthesis codes of Fryer et al. to estimate the star formation rate at high redshifts, for different progenitor models of GRBs. We find that no matter what the progenitor or population synthesis model, the star formation rate increases or remains constant to very high redshifts (z ≳ 10).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c31b01064e7f00358648cc2305a17f6480968492

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• Gamma-Ray Burst Formation Rate Inferred from the Spectral Peak Energy-Peak Luminosity Relation (2003, methodology): “Luminosity evolutions of (1þ z)1:4 0:5 and (1þ z)1:7 0:5 were suggested independently by Lloyd-Ronning et al. (2002a) and Wei (2002).”
• Signatures of Extragalactic Dust in Pre-Swift GRB Afterglows (2005, background): “…but still bright enough to yield viable data and a redshift might be small if the GRB frequency is coupled with the star formation rate (SFR; e.g., Lloyd-Ronning et al. 2002; Firmani et al. 2004) and low metallicities (MacFadyen & Woosley 1999). a This representswhich dustmodel is used in the…”
• THE COSMIC RATE, LUMINOSITY FUNCTION, AND INTRINSIC CORRELATIONS OF LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2009, background): “Notably, some of these works (e.g., Lloyd-Ronning et al. 2002; Yonetoku et al. 2004), using hazard statistics (Lynden-Bell 1971; Efron & Petrosian 1992; Petrosian 1993; Maloney & Petrosian 1999), also found evidence for potential strong luminosity evolution, parameterized as L ∝ (1+z)a, with a in…”
• CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, background): “Luminosity evolution in the GRB population could also contribute by alteringΨ(z) (e.g., Lloyd-Ronning et al. 2002; Firmani et al. 2004; Kocevski & Liang 2006; Salvaterra & Chincarini 2007; Salvaterra et al. 2009b; Virgili et al. 2011), but this is also uncertain (e.g., Butler et al. 2010; Wanderman…”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, background): “The possibility has been raised in the literature based on various different arguments (e.g., Lloyd-Ronning et al. 2002; Wei & Gao 2003; Donaghy et al. 2004; Firmani et al. 2004; Salvaterra & Chincari i 2006).”
• Low-Luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts as a Unique Population: Luminosity Function, Local Rate, and Beaming Factor (2006, methodology): “Stern et al. (1999) suggested a group of “simple” bursts with peak fluxes near the BATSE trigger threshold.”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts (2004, background): “…demonstratedd that if the GRB distribution extends to z=10 as some suggest sCiardi and Loeb, 2000; Lamb and Reichart, 2000; Bromm and Loeb, 2002; Lloyd-Ronning et al., 2002d, then such a narrow distribution requires a correlation between the intrinsic hardness of the burst and its redshift,…”
• How Massive Single Stars End Their Life (2002, methodology): “…redshift effects, we assume that the metallicity axis in Figures 1–4 is indeed logarithmic and use the metallicity redshift distribution assumed by Lloyd-Ronning et al. (2002): Pei, Fall, & Hauser (1999) distribution versus redshift with a Gaussian spread using a 1 deviation set to 0.5 in the…”
• The luminosity function and the rate of Swift's Gamma Ray Bursts (2009, result): “They find that the GRB rate at high redshifts (z > 4) is higher on than Hopkins and Beacom (2006) SFR. Alternatively luminosity evolution, has been suggested by some authors: (e.g. Lloyd-Ronning et al. 2002; Firmani et al. 2004; Matsubayashi et al. 2006; Kocevski and Liang 2006).”