The Host Galaxy of GRB 031203: Implications of Its Low Metallicity, Low Redshift, and Starburst Nature

By J. Xavier Prochaska, Joshua S. Bloom, Hsiao-Wen Chen, K. Hurley, J. Melbourne, A. Dressler, J. Graham, D. Osip, W. Vacca. 2004

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We present Keck/NIRSPEC near-IR images and Magellan/IMACS optical spectroscopy of the host galaxy of GRB 031203. The host is an actively star-forming galaxy at z = 0.1055 ± 0.0001. This is the lowest redshift GRB to date, aside from GRB 980425. From the hydrogen Balmer lines, we infer an extinction of AV = 3.62 ± 0.25 or a total reddening ET(B - V) = 1.17 ± 0.1 toward the sight line to the nebular regions. After correcting for reddening, we perform an emission-line analysis and derive an ISM temperature of T = 13400 ± 2000 K and electron density of ne = 300 cm-3. These imply a metallicity [O/H] = -0.72 ± 0.15 dex and a roughly solar abundance pattern for N, Ne, S, and Ar. Integrating Hα, we infer a dust-corrected star formation rate (SFR) of more than 11 M☉ yr-1. These observations have the following implications: (1) The galaxy has a low K'-band luminosity L ≈ L/5, typical of GRB host galaxies. (2) The low redshift indicates GRB 031203 had an isotropic-equivalent γ-ray energy release smaller than all previous confirmed GRB events. The burst discovery raises the likelihood of identifying many additional low-z, low-flux events with Swift. (3) The large SFR, low metallicity, and inferred hard radiation field are suggestive of massive star formation, supporting the collapsar model. (4) Several lines of evidence argue against the identification of GRB 031203 as an X-ray flash event.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f8d21781c108bcf27bc2319c3c33c74f7334c885

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Citations in the corpus

• The metallicity of the long GRB hosts and the fundamental metallicity relation of low-mass galaxies (2010, background): “…050401, Watson et al. 2006), so that the role of metallicity in driving the GRB phenomena remains unclear and it is still debated (Fynbo et al. 2003; Prochaska et al. 2004; Stanek et al. 2006; Fynbo et al. 2006; Wolf & Podsiadlowski 2007; Price et al. 2007; Modjaz et al. 2008; Kocevski et al.…”
• The Afterglow, Energetics, and Host Galaxy of the Short-Hard Gamma-Ray Burst 051221a (2006, background): “This is somewhat higher than in the host galaxies of long GRBs, some of which have metallicities that are ∼ 1/10 solar (e.g., Prochaska et al. 2004).”
• CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, background): “Moreover, host galaxies of long duration GRBs are often observed to be metal poor and have low luminosities, both in the nearby universe (e.g., Prochaska et al. 2004; Sollerman et al. 2005; Modjaz et al. 2006; Stanek et al. 2006; Wiersema et al. 2007) and at cosmological distances (e.g., Fruchter…”
• The Supernova Gamma-Ray Burst Connection (2006, background): “…hosts — or more precisely, the regions through which GRB afterglows are viewed — are low in metallicity (Vreeswijk et al., 2001; Savaglio et al., 2003; Prochaska et al., 2004a) though it remains to be seen whether metallicities are significantly different from field galaxies and damped Lyman…”
• A novel explosive process is required for the γ-ray burst GRB 060614 (2006, background): “23 M⊙ y −1 (L/L∗) , a value which is more than 20 times below that of typical long GRBs(16) and more than two orders of magnitude below that of long GRBs detected in low-luminosity dwarfs at low redshift.(17,18) It is worthwhile to note in this context that unlike long GRBs, members of the short GRB”
• GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, background): “In line with this picture were Lyα properties (Fynbo et al. 2003; Milvang-Jensen et al. 2012) and early measurements of sub-solar GRB host metallicities (e.g., Prochaska et al. 2004; Gorosabel et al. 2005; Sollerman et al. 2005).”
• Long-Lag, Wide-Pulse Gamma-Ray Bursts (2005, background): “In the case of the subluminous GRB 031203, whose source was determined to be at a low redshift (z ¼ 0:106; Prochaska et al. 2004), the spectral lag measure is relatively long ( lag 0:24 0:12), placing this burst, like GRB 980425, in an outlier position in the peak luminosity–spectral lag diagram.”
• The Progenitor Stars of Gamma-Ray Bursts (2005, background): “Either way, because of the likely dependence of mass loss on metallicity (Vink & de Koter 2005), GRBs will be favored in regions of low metallicity as predicted by MacFadyen & Woosley (1999) and observed by Prochaska et al. (2004).”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “Claims that long GRB-hosts are relatively metal poor have been made (e.g. Fynbo et al., 2003; Prochaska et al., 2004; Fruchter et al., 2006).”
• The Circumgalactic Medium (2017, methodology): “Radiative transfer models like Cloudy (Ferland et al. 2013) are used to build PIE models (e.g. Bergeron & Stasińska 1986; Prochaska et al. 2004; Lehnert et al. 2013; Werk et al. 2014; Turner et al. 2015), which are parametrized by density nH , or equivalently the ionization parameter logU ≡ Φ/nHc,…”
• Probing the Interstellar Medium near Star-forming Regions with Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglow Spectroscopy: Gas, Metals, and Dust (2007, background): “The metallicities of the H II regions in a small sample of z < 0.5 galaxies hosting GRBs are sub-solar (Prochaska et al. 2004; Sollerman et al. 2005) and several authors have noted that the values are systematically lower than the predicted distribution for galaxies drawn randomly according to…”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, result): “At the same time, several early studies were converging towards the idea that LGRBs favoured sub-solar, low-metallicity (Z) host/environments [234, 235, 236, 237]).”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, background): “Tentative evidence that metallicity isanother important factor to make a GRB has been collected (e.g., Ramirez-Ruiz et al. 2002b; Prochaska et al. 2004; Stanek et al. 2006; Modjaz et al. 2007, cf. Campana et al. 2007).”