Short versus long gamma-ray bursts: spectra, energetics, and luminosities

By G. Ghirlanda, L. Nava, G. Ghisellini, A. Celotti, C. Firmani. 2009

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We compare the spectral properties of 79 short and 79 long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) detected by BATSE and selected with the same limiting peak flux. Short GRBs have a low-energy spectral component harder and a peak energy slightly higher than long GRBs, but no difference is found when comparing short GRB spectra with those of the first 1-2 s emission of long GRBs. These results confirm earlier findings for brighter GRBs. The bolometric peak flux of short GRBs correlates with their peak energy in a similar way to long bursts. Short and long GRBs populate different regions of the bolometric fluence-peak energy plane, short bursts being less energetic by a factor similar to the ratio of their durations. If short and long GRBs had similar redshift distributions, they would have similar luminosities yet different energies, which correlate with the peak energy Epeak for the population of long GRBs. We also test whether short GRBs are consistent with the Epeak−Eiso and Epeak−Liso correlations for the available sample of short (6 events) and long (92 events) GRBs with measured redshifts and E obs : while short GRBs are inconsistent with the Epeak−Eiso correlation of long GRBs, they could follow the Epeak−Liso correlation of long bursts. All the above indications point to short GRBs being similar to the first phases of long bursts. This suggests that a similar central engine (except for its duration) operates in GRBs of different durations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c5f0145c3f9a81bb769bdad474c7256fd249dbd2

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Pawan Kumar
3. E. Liang
4. Binbin Zhang
5. E. Berger
6. D. Burrows
7. Xuefeng Wu
8. N. Gehrels

Citations in the corpus

• A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF FERMI GAMMA-RAY BURST DATA. I. SPECTRAL COMPONENTS AND THE POSSIBLE PHYSICAL ORIGINS OF LAT/GBM GRBs (2010, result): “This is consistent with the finding (Zhang et al. 2009; Ghirlanda et al. 2009) that long/short GRBs are not clearly distinguished in the Lpγ,iso − Ep domain.”
• 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): “A similar conclusion was drawn by Ghirlanda et al. (2009) in an anaylsis of the BATSE GRBs. Figure 4a displays the luminosity-spectral lag diagram of GRBs with the three samples plotted.”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Indeed, in the Ep,z −Lγ,p,iso space, short and long GRBs are no longer clearly separated, suggesting that their radiation processes are similar (Zhang et al., 2009a; Ghirlanda et al., 2009; Guiriec et al., 2013; Tsutsui et al., 2013).”
• THE INTERNAL-COLLISION-INDUCED MAGNETIC RECONNECTION AND TURBULENCE (ICMART) MODEL OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2010, background): “The relations are also found to apply for different emission episodes within the same burst (Liang et al. 2004; Ghirlanda et al. 2009)7.”
• Extremely energetic Fermi Gamma-Ray Bursts obey spectral energy correlations (2009, unknown): “E iso correlation, it was pointed out that E p , i also correlates with other GRB intensity indicators, such as the peak luminosity, L p , iso , (Yonetoku et al. 2004; Ghirlanda et al. 2005b) or the average luminosity, L iso , (Lamb et al. 2004; Ghirlanda et al. 2009).”
• THE SECOND SWIFT BURST ALERT TELESCOPE GAMMA-RAY BURST CATALOG (2011, background): “We confirm in the BAT GRB sample that S-GRBs in general have a harder spectrum than that of L-GRBs (e.g., Kouveliotou et al. – 13 – 1993; Ghirlanda et al. 2009).”
• A complete sample of bright Swift long gamma-ray bursts: testing the spectral-energy correlations (2011, unknown): “There are indications that short bursts (i.e. bursts with observed duration<2 s) obey the very sameEpeak− Liso relation defined by long events but they are inconsistent with theEpeak− Eiso correlation (Ghirlanda et al. 2009; Amati 2010).”
• Spectral properties of 438 GRBs detected by Fermi/GBM (2010, result): “Similar results are obtained by considering the time resolved spectral analysis of flux/ ence limited samples of bright BATSE bursts (Preece et al. 1998; Preece et al. 2000; Kaneko et al. 2006).”
• Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2013, background): “…key finding is that short GRBs generally have harder spectra than long GRBs due to a combination of a shallower low-energy spectralslope,α ≈ −0.4 versus≈ −0.9, and a higher spectral peak,Ep ≈ 400 versus≈ 200 keV (e.g.,Paciesas et al. 2003; Ghirlanda et al. 2009; Ghirlanda, Ghisellini & Nava 2011).”