GRB 080913 AT REDSHIFT 6.7

By J. Greiner, T. Krühler, Johan Peter Uldall Fynbo, A. Rossi, R. Schwarz, S. Klose, S. Savaglio, N. Tanvir, S. McBreen, T. Totani and 36 more. 2008

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on the detection by Swift of GRB 080913, and subsequent optical/near-infrared follow-up observations by GROND, which led to the discovery of its optical/NIR afterglow and the recognition of its high-z nature via the detection of a spectral break between the i′ and z′ bands. Spectroscopy obtained at the ESO-VLT revealed a continuum extending down to λ = 9400 Å, and zero flux for 7500 Å<λ < 9400 Å, which we interpret as the onset of a Gunn–Peterson trough at z = 6.695± 0.025 (95.5% confidence level), making GRB 080913 the highest-redshift gamma-ray burst (GRB) to date, and more distant than the highest-redshift QSO. We note that many redshift indicators that are based on promptly available burst or afterglow properties have failed for GRB 080913. We report on our follow-up campaign and compare the properties of GRB 080913 with bursts at lower redshift. In particular, since the afterglow of this burst is fainter than typical for GRBs, we show that 2 m class telescopes can identify most high-redshift GRBs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c5cc6ce8884ce6c036cb892e13007d178ec0d254

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• The SEDs and host galaxies of the dustiest GRB afterglows (2011, background): “These optically dark bursts could be caused by either high-redshift (e.g., Greiner et al. 2009; Tanvir et al. 2009; Salvaterra et al. 2009; Cucchiara et al. 2011), large column densities of dust (e.g., Klose et al. 2000, 2003; Tanvir et al. 2008; Perley et al. 2011b) or an intrinsically fainter…”
• LOW-RESOLUTION SPECTROSCOPY OF GAMMA-RAY BURST OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS: BIASES IN THE SWIFT SAMPLE AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ABSORBERS (2009, methodology): “Su h systemati nearIRfollow-up is urrently arried out by a few teams using, e.g., GROND, UKIRT and PAIRITEL(e.g. Greiner et al. 2009; Krühler et al. 2008; Tanvir et al. 2008a; Pro haska et al. 2009).”
• CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, background): “The recent discovery of severalz > 6 long-duration GRBs (Kawai et al. 2006; Greiner et al. 2009; Tanvir et al. 2009; Salvaterra et al. 2009a; Cucchiara et al. 2011) makes this a particularly interesting avenue to explore.”
• SPECTROSCOPIC CONFIRMATION OF z ∼ 7 LYMAN BREAK GALAXIES: PROBING THE EARLIEST GALAXIES AND THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION (2011, background): “Also, spectral analysis of z ∼6.3 and 6.7 GRBs imply that reionization is not yet complete at these epochs with χz=6.3HI ≤ 0.17 − −0.6 (Totani et al. 2006; but see also McQueen et al. 2008 for a different analysis) and χz=6.7HI > 0.35 (Greiner et al. 2009).”
• GeV gamma-ray attenuation and the high-redshift UV background (2009, background): “The recent observation by Fermi of high-energy emission from GRB 080916C at z=4.35 (Greiner et al. 2009) provides a valuable first test of these predictions for GeV absorption.”
• Signatures of X-rays in the early Universe (2012, background): “Photons below our fiducial choice of hν0 = 300 eV have optical depths exceeding unity for NHI ∼> 10 21.5 cm−2, consistent with the column densities seen in high-redshift gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) (Totani et al. 2006; Greiner et al. 2009).”
• Short versus long gamma-ray bursts: spectra, energetics, and luminosities (2009, background): “This seems to be supported by the hardness of this event (Perez–Ramirez et al. 2008, but see Greiner et al. 2008).”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “The γ-ray isotropic luminosity for GRB 080916C was Lγ,52 ∼ 20, and the jet LF is estimated to be Γ2 ∼ 9 (e.g. Abdo et al., 2009c; Greiner et al., 2009a).”
• 21cmfast: a fast, seminumerical simulation of the high‐redshift 21‐cm signal (2010, background): “…quasars (e.g. Fan et al. 2006), candidate Lyman break galaxies (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2008, 2009; McLure et al. 2009; Ouchi et al. 2009), Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs; e.g. Kashikawa et al. 2006; Shimasaku et al. 2006) and GRBs (e.g. Cusumano et al. 2006; Greiner et al. 2009; Salvaterra et al. 2009).”
• STATISTICS OF 207 Lyα EMITTERS AT A REDSHIFT NEAR 7: CONSTRAINTS ON REIONIZATION AND GALAXY FORMATION MODELS (2010, background): “Since the z ≃ 6.7 GRB estimate of Greiner et al. (2009) allows xHI = 0.001 − 1 within the 1.2σ level due to the strong degeneracy between absorptions of a damped Lyα absorber and IGM, the result of Greiner et al. (2009) is not included in Figure 23.”
• A PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFT OF z ∼ 9.4 FOR GRB 090429B (2011, background): “Follow-up spectroscopy of these candidates has proved several to be at very high redshift (e.g., Kawai et al. 2006; Greiner et al. 2009), culminating in GRB 090423 at z ≈ 8.2 (Tanvir et al. 2009; Salvaterra et al. 2009).”
• 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, methodology): “This naturally raises the interesting question regarding the progenitor system of the burst (Greiner et al. 2009a; Perez-Ramirez et al. 2008; Belczynski et al. 2008; Tanvir et al. 2009; Salvaterra et al. 2009).”
• THE STAR FORMATION RATE IN THE REIONIZATION ERA AS INDICATED BY GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2009, background): “Several recent high-z bursts, most notably GRB 080913 at z ≃ 6.7 (Greiner et al. 2009) and GRB 090423 atz ≃ 8.1 (Salvaterra et al. 2009; Tanvir et al. 2009), also allow us toextend the SFR determinations from Yüksel et al. (2008) (which went to z ∼ 6) to even higher redshifts.”
• Systematic Identification of LAEs for Visible Exploration and Reionization Research Using Subaru HSC (SILVERRUSH). I. Program strategy and clustering properties of ∼2000 Lyα emitters at z = 6–7 over the 0.3–0.5 Gpc2 survey area (2017, background): “…wing (DW) absorption measurements of QSOs (Mortlock et al. 2011; Bolton et al. 2011), gamma-ray bursts (GRBs; Totani et al. 2006, 2014, 2016; see also Greiner et al. 2009), and galaxies including LAEs (Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Ouchi et al. 2010; Ota et al. 2010; Kashikawa et al. 2011; Pentericci et…”