An origin for short γ-ray bursts unassociated with current star formation

By S. Barthelmy, G. Chincarini, D. Burrows, N. Gehrels, S. Covino, A. Moretti, P. Romano, P. O’Brien, C. Sarazin, C. Kouveliotou and 21 more. Nature, 2005

278 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two short (< 2 s) γ-ray bursts (GRBs) have recently been localized and fading afterglow counterparts detected. The combination of these two results left unclear the nature of the host galaxies of the bursts, because one was a star-forming dwarf, while the other was probably an elliptical galaxy. Here we report the X-ray localization of a short burst (GRB 050724) with unusual γ-ray and X-ray properties. The X-ray afterglow lies off the centre of an elliptical galaxy at a redshift of z = 0.258 (ref. 5), coincident with the position determined by ground-based optical and radio observations. The low level of star formation typical for elliptical galaxies makes it unlikely that the burst originated in a supernova explosion. A supernova origin was also ruled out for GRB 050709 (refs 3, 31), even though that burst took place in a galaxy with current star formation. The isotropic energy for the short bursts is 2–3 orders of magnitude lower than that for the long bursts. Our results therefore suggest that an alternative source of bursts—the coalescence of binary systems of neutron stars or a neutron star-black hole pair—are the progenitors of short bursts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e96977a4d3ea22bae727de51a539ad00ff1b6b52

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. E. Berger
3. B. Metzger
4. E. Nakar
5. Pawan Kumar
6. T. Piran
7. E. Liang
8. E. Quataert

Citations in the corpus

• SHORT VERSUS LONG AND COLLAPSARS VERSUS NON-COLLAPSARS: A QUANTITATIVE CLASSIFICATION OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2012, background): “…center and within high star-forming regions (Fruchter et al. 2006), differs from the position distribution of SGRBs within their hosts, which is more diffuse and with no apparent association with star formation (Barthelmy et al. 2005; Fox et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Nakar 2007; Berger 2009).”
• Testing the Curvature Effect and Internal Origin of Gamma-Ray Burst Prompt Emissions and X-Ray Flares with Swift Data (2006, background): “The steep-decay component commonly existing in early X-ray afterglows (Tagliaferri et al. 2005; Barthelmy et al. 2005b; Cusumano et al. 2006b; Vaughan et al. 2006) has been generally interpreted as the tail of the prompt emission (Zhang et al. 2006a; Nousek et al. 2006; Panaitescu et al. 2006;…”
• The Early X-Ray Emission from GRBs (2006, background): “Some short bursts may have collimated flow (e.g. GRB051221A, Burrows et al. 2006) although this is less clear in others (e.g. GRB050724, Barthelmy et al. 2005b).”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, background): “GRB 050724 (and likely also GRB 050709) was followed by erratic X-ray flares that have properties similar to the prompt emission and require restat of the central engine (Barthelmy et al. 2005b; Zhang et al. 2006).”
• The Afterglow, Energetics, and Host Galaxy of the Short-Hard Gamma-Ray Burst 051221a (2006, background): “…relatively wide opening angles of ∼ 10◦, are associated with both starforming and elliptical galaxies, and are not associated with bright supernovae (Barthelmy et al. 2005; Berger et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Fox et al. 2005; Gehrels et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005a,b; Villasenor et al.…”
• 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, background): “…deep afterglow searches for a handful of short GRBs (Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Fox et al. 2005; Villasenor et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005a; Barthelmy et al. 2005a; Berger et al. 2005) suggest that some of them are associated with nearby earlytype galaxies with little star formation.”
• Short Gamma-Ray Bursts with Extended Emission (2006, background): “The Swift and HETE-2 short bursts with extended low-level emission are similar in that the extended emission is softer than the initial spike (Barthelmy et al. 2005a; Villasenor et al. 2005).”
• THE SECOND SWIFT BURST ALERT TELESCOPE GAMMA-RAY BURST CATALOG (2011, methodology): “The various data types of the BAT instrument are described in details in Barthelmy et al. (2005a).”
• EARLY X-RAY AND OPTICAL AFTERGLOW OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE BURSTS FROM MERGERS OF BINARY NEUTRON STARS (2012, background): “This is based on the following two considerations: First, some SGRBs indeed have a bright X-ray plateau that is likely due to the magnetar spindown origin (Rowlinson et al. 2010; Rowlinson & O’Brien 2012), which suggests that the main energy channel of releasing the magnetic dissipation energy is in”
• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, background): “…of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia with nearby early-type galaxies with little star formation (Gehrels et al. 2005; Bloom et al. 2006; Barthelmy et al. 2005; Berger et al. 2005), to have a large offset from the center of the host galaxy (e.g. Fox et al. 2005; Fong et al. 2010), and…”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2009, methodology): “…of low star formation, either in low star forming elliptical galaxies as for GRB 050509B (Gehrels et al. 2005, Bloom et al. 2006) and GRB 050724 (Barthelmy et al. 2005c, Berger et al. 2005b) or in a region of a galaxy with low star formation (Villasenor et al. 2005, Fox et al. 2005, Hjorth et…”
• The unusual X-ray emission of the short Swift GRB 090515: evidence for the formation of a magnetar? (2010, background): “Additionally, Swift has enabled the detection of short GRB (SGRB) X-ray afterglows, allowing them to be directly compared to long GRB (LGRB) afterglows (Barthelmy et al. 2005a; Gehrels et al. 2005; Hjorth et al. 2005a).”
• Short-hard gamma-ray bursts (2007, background): “Barthelmy et al. (2005); Berger et al. (2005); Krimm et al. (2005); Grupe et al. (2006) 4.”
• Short versus long gamma-ray bursts: spectra, energetics, and luminosities (2009, result): “Short GRBs exhibit X–ray and optical afterglows, similar to those of long GRBs, and in a few cases also X–ray flares, similar to those discovered in the class of long events (e.g. Barthelmy et al. 2005).”
• Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger (2017, background): “These hints included: (i) their association with both elliptical and star-forming galaxies (Barthelmy et al. 2005; Prochaska et al. 2006; Berger et al. 2007; Ofek et al. 2007; Troja et al. 2008; D’Avanzo et al. 2009; Fong et al. 2013), due to a very wide range of delay times, as predicted…”
• A New Population of High-Redshift Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2006, background): “The remaining two bursts (051227 and 060121) are most likely in the short duration category (Barthelmy et al. 2005a; Donaghy et al. 2006) but have formal T90 durations of ∼> 2 s.”
• Gamma-ray burst afterglows (2006, methodology): “In order to account for the late time flares in 050724, Barthelmy et al. (2005c) suggest a possible NS-BH merger progenitor system.”