A Standard Kinetic Energy Reservoir in Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows

By E. Berger, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, D. Frail. 2003

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a comprehensive sample of X-ray observations of 41 γ-ray burst (GRB) afterglows, as well as jet opening angles, θj, for a subset with measured jet breaks. We show that there is a significant dispersion in the X-ray fluxes, and hence isotropic X-ray luminosities (LX,iso), normalized to t = 10 hr. However, there is a strong correlation between LX,iso and the beaming fractions, fb ≡ [1 - cos(θj)]. As a result, the true X-ray luminosity of GRB afterglows, LX = fbLX,iso, is approximately constant, with a dispersion of only a factor of 2. Since ϵeEb ∝ LX, the strong clustering of LX directly implies that the adiabatic blast wave kinetic energy in the afterglow phase, Eb, is tightly clustered. The narrow distribution of LX also suggests that p ≈ 2, that inverse Compton emission does not in general dominate the observed X-ray luminosity, and that radiative losses at t < 10 hr are relatively small. Thus, despite the large diversity in the observed properties of GRBs and their afterglows, the energy imparted by the GRB central engine to the relativistic ejecta is approximately constant.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c435d9f3c2726c85ead45221df36db84b594fe4f

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. Pawan Kumar
4. B. Metzger
5. E. Nakar
6. E. Liang
7. W. Fong
8. Binbin Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• AFTERGLOW OBSERVATIONS OF FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AND THE EMERGING CLASS OF HYPER-ENERGETIC EVENTS (2010, background): “Such measurements, made nearly a decade ago, pointed to a total relativistic energy yield (Erel ≈ Eγ + EKE) of ∼ 1051 erg (Frail et al. 2001; Panaitescu & Kumar 2001a; Freedman & Waxman 2001; Bloom et al. 2003; Berger et al. 2003a).”
• The Collimation-corrected Gamma-Ray Burst Energies Correlate with the Peak Energy of Their νFν Spectrum (2004, background): “On the other hand, GRB 030329/SN 2003dh (Stanek et al. 2003), with a jet opening angle of 5 (Price et al. 2003a; Tiengo et al. 2003; Berger et al. 2003b), has a collimation corrected energy and a peak spectral energy that places on the Epeak–”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, methodology): “Assuming that the opening angle for the jet during the prompt phase is same as the angle determined from afterglow data, the total collimation-corrected energy is found to be typically smaller than the upper limit of 2 × 1052 erg [26,37,200,28].”
• Relativistic Shocks: Particle Acceleration and Magnetization (2015, background): “Observations of GRB afterglows led to the conclusion that highly relativistic collisionless shocks produce a power-law distribution of high energy particles with sp = 4.2 ± 0.2 (Waxman 1997; Freedman and Waxman 2001; Berger et al. 2003).”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, methodology): “In both types of model, if the line of sight sweeps the less-energetic wide beam, one may observe an XRF. Phenomenologically, the twocomponent jet model has been introduced in several other contexts (Lipunov et al. 2001; Berger et al. 2003a).”
• A Comprehensive Analysis of Swift XRT Data. III. Jet Break Candidates in X-Ray and Optical Afterglow Light Curves (2007, methodology): “Assuming that these are real jet breaks, we revisit the GRB jet energy budget (Frail et al. 2001; Bloom et al. 2003; Berger et al. 2003) with conventional jet models (x 5).”
• The Luminosity and Angular Distributions of Long-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2003, background): “…equipartition, εe,−0.5 ≃ 1, based on the clustering of explosion energies (Frail et al. 2001) and of X-ray afterglow luminosity (Freedman & Waxman 2001, Berger et al. 2003) The value of εB is less well constrained by observations, since in most cases there is a degeneracy between εB and n in…”
• A NEW POPULATION OF ULTRA-LONG DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2013, background): “Nonetheless, for canonical jet parameters in simple models (e.g., Frail et al. 2001) it is possible to place limits on the jet opening angle of θj > 12 degrees (111209A) and θj > 10 degrees (121027A).”
• Gamma-ray burst afterglows (2006, methodology): “…to interpret these variabilities usually invoke external shock related processes, such as density fluctuation , inhomogeneous jets, refreshed shocks, or multiple component jets (Lazzati et al. 2002; Heyl & Perna 2003; Nakar et al. 2003; Berger et al. 2003a; Granot et al. 2003; Ioka et al. 2005).”
• The sub-energetic γ-ray burst GRB 031203 as a cosmic analogue to the nearby GRB 980425 (2004, background): “The afterglow properties of GRB 031203 also seem to be intermediate between classical cosmological GRBs and GRB 980425: the isotropic X-ray luminosity of GRB 031203 at t a 10 h is L X e 9 × 10 42  erg cm -2  s -1 , nearly 10 3 times fainter than that observe”
• The Afterglow, Energetics, and Host Galaxy of the Short-Hard Gamma-Ray Burst 051221a (2006, background): “It has been argued that the majority of the long GRBs have a total (prompt plus afterglow) true energy release within 0.5 dex of 1.7 × 1051 erg (Berger et al. 2003), with 3 events having a total energy of ∼< 10 50 erg (Soderberg et al. 2004, 2006b).”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “…distributions to those for long GRBs, we collect opening angle measurements for 265 long GRBs, including 17 events with limits (Frail et al. 2001; Berger et al. 2003; Bloom et al. 2003; Ghirlanda et al. 2004; Friedman & Bloom 2005; Racusin et al. 2009; Cenko et al. 2010, 2011; Filgas et al.…”
• Temporal Evolution of Thermal Emission from Relativistically Expanding Plasma (2008, methodology): “The time scale derived on the right hand side of equation 7 is based on the estimate of the jet opening angle in GRB outflow, θ ≤ θj ≃ 0.1 (e.g., Berger et al. 2003).”