The most energetic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are remarkable sources releasing huge amounts of energy on short timescales. Their prompt emission, which usually lasts a few seconds, is so bright that it ...is visible across the whole observable universe. Studying these extreme events may provide clues on the nature of GRB progenitors and on the physical processes at work in relativistic jets. In this paper, we study the bright end of the isotropic energy distribution of long GRBs. We use two samples of long GRBs with redshift detected by Fermi/GBM or Konus-Wind, two instruments that measure the spectral shape and the energetics of the prompt emission accurately. We focus on GRBs within a range of redshifts z = 1-5, a volume that contains a large number of energetic GRBs, and we propose a simple method to reconstruct the bright end of the GRB energy distribution from the observed one. We find that the GRB energy distribution cannot be described by a simple power law but requires a strong cutoff above 1 - 3 × 10 54 erg. We attribute this feature to an intrinsic limit on the energy per unit of solid angle radiated by GRBs.
The SVOM mission currently under development will carry various instruments, and in particular the coded-mask telescope ECLAIRs, with a large field of view of about 2 sr, operating in the 4–150 keV ...energy band. The main goal of ECLAIRs is to detect high-energy transients such as gamma-ray bursts. Its onboard trigger software will search for new hard X-ray sources appearing in the sky, as well as peculiar behaviour (e.g. strong outbursts) from known sources, in order to repoint the satellite to perform follow-up observations with its onboard narrow-field-of-view instruments. The presence of known X-ray sources must be disentangled from the appearance of new sources. This is done with the help of an onboard source catalogue, which we present in this paper. As an input we use catalogues of X-ray sources detected by
Swift
/BAT and MAXI/GSC and we study the influence of the sources on ECLAIRs’ background level and on the quality of the sky-image reconstruction process. We show that the influence of the sources depends on the pointing direction on the sky, on the energy band, and on the exposure time. In the Galactic centre, the contribution from known sources largely dominates the cosmic X-ray background, which is, on the contrary, the main background in sky regions lacking strong sources. We also demonstrate the need to clean the contributions of these sources in order to maintain a low noise level in the sky images and to maintain a low threshold for the detection of new sources without introducing false triggers. We briefly describe one of our cleaning methods and its challenges. Finally, we present the overall structure of the onboard catalogue and the way it will be used to perform the source cleaning and disentangle detections of new sources from outbursts of known sources.
The delay in arrival times between high and low energy photons from cosmic sources can be used to test the violation of the Lorentz invariance (LIV), predicted by some quantum gravity theories, and ...to constrain its characteristic energy scale EQG that is of the order of the Planck energy. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and blazars are ideal for this purpose thanks to their broad spectral energy distribution and cosmological distances: at first order approximation, the constraints on EQG are proportional to the photon energy separation and the distance of the source. However, the LIV tiny contribution to the total time delay can be dominated by intrinsic delays related to the physics of the sources: long GRBs typically show a delay between high and low energy photons related to their spectral evolution (spectral lag). Short GRBs have null intrinsic spectral lags and are therefore an ideal tool to measure any LIV effect. We considered a sample of 15 short GRBs with known redshift observed by Swift and we estimate a limit on EQG ≳ 1.5 × 1016 GeV. Our estimate represents an improvement with respect to the limit obtained with a larger (double) sample of long GRBs and is more robust than the estimates on single events because it accounts for the intrinsic delay in a statistical sense.
The exploration of the universe has recently entered a new era thanks to the multi-messenger paradigm, characterized by a continuous increase in the quantity and quality of experimental data that is ...obtained by the detection of the various cosmic messengers (photons, neutrinos, cosmic rays and gravitational waves) from numerous origins. They give us information about their sources in the universe and the properties of the intergalactic medium. Moreover, multi-messenger astronomy opens up the possibility to search for phenomenological signatures of quantum gravity. On the one hand, the most energetic events allow us to test our physical theories at energy regimes which are not directly accessible in accelerators; on the other hand, tiny effects in the propagation of very high energy particles could be amplified by cosmological distances. After decades of merely theoretical investigations, the possibility of obtaining phenomenological indications of Planck-scale effects is a revolutionary step in the quest for a quantum theory of gravity, but it requires cooperation between different communities of physicists (both theoretical and experimental). This review, prepared within the COST Action CA18108 “Quantum gravity phenomenology in the multi-messenger approach”, is aimed at promoting this cooperation by giving a state-of-the art account of the interdisciplinary expertise that is needed in the effective search of quantum gravity footprints in the production, propagation and detection of cosmic messengers.
Context. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be detected at cosmological distances, and therefore can be used to study the contents and phases of the early Universe. The 4−150 keV wide-field trigger camera ...ECLAIRs on board the Space-based multi-band Variable Object Monitor (SVOM) mission, dedicated to studying the high-energy transient sky in synergy with multi-messenger follow-up instruments, has been adapted to detect high- z GRBs. Aims. Investigating the detection capabilities of ECLAIRs for high-redshift GRBs and estimating the impacts of instrumental biases in reconstructing some of the source measured properties, focusing on GRB duration biases as a function of redshift. Methods. We simulated realistic detection scenarios for a sample of 162 already observed GRBs with known redshift values as they would have been seen by ECLAIRs. We simulated them at redshift values equal to and higher than their measured value. Then we assessed whether they would be detected with a trigger algorithm resembling that on board ECLAIRs, and derived quantities, such as T 90 , for those that would have been detected. Results. We find that ECLAIRs would be capable of detecting GRBs up to very high redshift values (e.g. 20 GRBs in our sample are detectable within more than 0.4 of the ECLAIRs field of view for z sim > 12). The ECLAIRs low-energy threshold of 4 keV, contributes to this great detection capability, as it may enhance it at high redshift ( z > 10) by over 10% compared with a 15 keV low-energy threshold. We also show that the detection of GRBs at high- z values may imprint tip-of-the-iceberg biases on the GRB duration measurements, which can affect the reconstruction of other source properties.
We investigated the rest-frame spectral lags of two complete samples of bright long (50) and short (6) gamma-ray bursts (GRB) detected by Swift. We analysed the Swift/Burst Alert Telescope data ...through a discrete cross-correlation function fitted with an asymmetric Gaussian function to estimate the lag and the associated uncertainty. We find that half of the long GRBs have a positive lag and half a lag consistent with zero. All short GRBs have lags consistent with zero. The distributions of the spectral lags for short and long GRBs have different average values. Limited by the small number of short GRBs, we cannot exclude at more than 2s significance level that the two distributions of lags are drawn from the same parent population. If we consider the entire sample of long GRBs, we do not find evidence for a lag-luminosity correlation, rather the lag-luminosity plane appears filled on the left-hand side, thus suggesting that the lag-luminosity correlation could be a boundary. Short GRBs are consistent with the long ones in the lag-luminosity plane.
We describe and discuss the global properties of 45 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by HETE-2 during the first 3 years of its mission, focusing on the properties of X-ray flashes (XRFs) and X-ray ...rich GRBs (XRRs). We find that the numbers of XRFs, XRRs, and GRBs are comparable, and that the durations and the sky distributions of XRFs and XRRs are similar to those of GRBs. We also find that the spectral properties of XRFs and XRRs are similar to those of GRBs, except that the values of the peak energy E of the burst spectrum in F, the peak energy flux F sub(peak), and the energy fluence S sub(E) of XRFs are much smaller (and those of XRRs are smaller) than those of GRBs. Finally, we find that the distributions of all three kinds of bursts form a continuum in the S sub(E)(2 30 keV), S sub(E)(30 400) keV plane, the S sub(E)(2 400 keV), E sub(peak) plane, and the F sub(peak)(50 300 keV), E sub(peak) plane. These results provide strong evidence that all three kinds of bursts arise from the same phenomenon.
Abstract
Ultra-long gamma-ray bursts are a class of high-energy transients lasting several hours. Their exact nature is still elusive, and several models have been proposed to explain them. Because ...of the limited coverage of wide-field gamma-ray detectors, the study of their prompt phase with sensitive narrow-field X-ray instruments could help in understanding the origin of ultra-long GRBs. However, the observers face a true problem in rapidly activating follow-up observations, due to the challenging identification of an ultra-long GRB before the end of the prompt phase. We present here a comparison of the prompt properties available after a few tens of minutes of a sample of ultra-long GRBs and normal long GRBs, looking for prior indicators of the long duration. We find that there is no such clear prior indicator of the duration of the burst. We also found that statistically, a burst lasting at least 10 and 20 minutes has respectively $28{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ and $50{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ probability to be an ultralong event. These findings point towards a common central engine for normal long and ultra-long GRBs, with the collapsar model privileged.
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