We present the fourth in a series of catalogs of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed with Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (Fermi-GBM). It extends the six year catalog by four more years, now covering ...the 10 year time period from trigger enabling on 2008 July 12 to 2018 July 11. During this time period GBM triggered almost twice a day on transient events, 2356 of which we identified as cosmic GRBs. Additional trigger events were due to solar flare events, magnetar burst activities, and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. The intention of the GBM GRB catalog series is to provide updated information to the community on the most important observables of the GBM-detected GRBs. For each GRB the location and main characteristics of the prompt emission, the duration, peak flux, and fluence are derived. The latter two quantities are calculated for the 50-300 keV energy band, where the maximum energy release of GRBs in the instrument reference system is observed and also for a broader energy band from 10-1000 keV, exploiting the full energy range of GBM's low-energy detectors. Furthermore, information is given on the settings of the triggering criteria and exceptional operational conditions during years 7 to 10 in the mission. This fourth catalog is an official product of the Fermi-GBM science team, and the data files containing the complete results are available from the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center.
A comprehensive suite of instruments was used to quantify the emissions of over 200 organic gases, including methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and 9 inorganic gases from 56 laboratory ...burns of 18 different biomass fuel types common in the southeastern, southwestern, or northern US. A gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) instrument provided extensive chemical detail of discrete air samples collected during a laboratory burn and was complemented by real-time measurements of organic and inorganic species via an open-path Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (OP-FTIR) instrument and three different chemical ionization-mass spectrometers. These measurements were conducted in February 2009 at the US Department of Agriculture's Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana and were used as the basis for a number of emission factors reported by Yokelson et al. (2013). The relative magnitude and composition of the gases emitted varied by individual fuel type and, more broadly, by the three geographic fuel regions being simulated. Discrete emission ratios relative to carbon monoxide (CO) were used to characterize the composition of gases emitted by mass; reactivity with the hydroxyl radical, OH; and potential secondary organic aerosol (SOA) precursors for the 3 different US fuel regions presented here. VOCs contributed less than 0.78 % ± 0.12 % of emissions by mole and less than 0.95 % × 0.07 % of emissions by mass (on average) due to the predominance of CO2, CO, CH4, and NOx emissions; however, VOCs contributed 70–90 (±16) % to OH reactivity and were the only measured gas-phase source of SOA precursors from combustion of biomass. Over 82 % of the VOC emissions by mole were unsaturated compounds including highly reactive alkenes and aromatics and photolabile oxygenated VOCs (OVOCs) such as formaldehyde. OVOCs contributed 57–68 % of the VOC mass emitted, 41–54 % of VOC-OH reactivity, and aromatic-OVOCs such as benzenediols, phenols, and benzaldehyde were the dominant potential SOA precursors. In addition, ambient air measurements of emissions from the Fourmile Canyon Fire that affected Boulder, Colorado in September 2010 allowed us to investigate biomass burning (BB) emissions in the presence of other VOC sources (i.e., urban and biogenic emissions) and identify several promising BB markers including benzofuran, 2-furaldehyde, 2-methylfuran, furan, and benzonitrile.
Correlations between optical flashes and gamma-ray emissions in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been searched in order to clarify the question of whether these emissions occur at internal and/or ...external shocks. Among the most powerful GRBs ever recorded are GRB 080319B and GRB 130427A, which at early phases presented bright optical flashes possibly correlated with γ-ray components. Additionally, both bursts were fortuitously located within the field of view of the TeV γ-ray Milagro and HAWC observatories, and although no statistically significant excess of counts were collected, upper limits were placed on the GeV-TeV emission. Considering the synchrotron self-Compton emission from internal shocks and requiring the GeV-TeV upper limits, we found that the optical flashes and the γ-ray components are produced by different electron populations. Analyzing the optical flashes together with the multiwavelength afterglow observation, we found that these flashes can be interpreted in the framework of the synchrotron reverse shock model when outflows have arbitrary magnetizations.
We deployed a high-resolution proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS) to measure biomass-burning emissions from peat, crop residue, cooking fires, and many other fire ...types during the fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4) laboratory campaign. A combination of gas standard calibrations and composition sensitive, mass-dependent calibration curves was applied to quantify gas-phase non-methane organic compounds (NMOCs) observed in the complex mixture of fire emissions. We used several approaches to assign the best identities to most major "exact masses", including many high molecular mass species. Using these methods, approximately 80–96% of the total NMOC mass detected by the PTR-TOF-MS and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was positively or tentatively identified for major fuel types. We report data for many rarely measured or previously unmeasured emissions in several compound classes including aromatic hydrocarbons, phenolic compounds, and furans; many of these are suspected secondary organic aerosol precursors. A large set of new emission factors (EFs) for a range of globally significant biomass fuels is presented. Measurements show that oxygenated NMOCs accounted for the largest fraction of emissions of all compound classes. In a brief study of various traditional and advanced cooking methods, the EFs for these emissions groups were greatest for open three-stone cooking in comparison to their more advanced counterparts. Several little-studied nitrogen-containing organic compounds were detected from many fuel types, that together accounted for 0.1–8.7% of the fuel nitrogen, and some may play a role in new particle formation.
Abstract
We explore fitting gamma-ray burst (GRB) spectra with three physically motivated models, and thus revisit the viability of synchrotron radiation as the primary source of GRB prompt emission. ...We pick a sample of 100 bright GRBs observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), based on their energy flux values. In addition to the standard empirical spectral models used in previous GBM spectroscopy catalogs, we also consider three physically motivated models; (a) a thermal synchrotron model, (b) a Band model with a high-energy cutoff, and (c) a smoothly broken power-law (SBPL) model with a multiplicative broken power law (MBPL). We then adopt the Bayesian information criterion to compare the fits obtained and choose the best model. We find that 42% of the GRBs from the fluence spectra and 23% of GRBs from the peak-flux spectra have one of the three physically motivated models as their preferred one. From the peak-flux spectral fits, we find that the low-energy index distributions from the empirical model fits for long GRBs peak around the synchrotron value of −2/3, while the two low-energy indices from the SBPL+MBPL fits of long GRBs peak close to the −2/3 and −3/2 values expected for a synchrotron spectrum from marginally fast-cooling electrons.
Abstract
We present the systematic spectral analyses of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor during its first ten years of operation. This catalog contains two types ...of spectra: time-integrated spectral fits and spectral fits at the brightest time bin, from 2297 GRBs, resulting in a compendium of over 18,000 spectra. The four different spectral models used for fitting the spectra were selected based on their empirical importance to the shape of many GRBs. We describe in detail our procedure and criteria for the analyses, and present the bulk results in the form of parameter distributions both in the observer frame and in the GRB rest frame. 941 GRBs from the first four years have been refitted using the same methodology as that of the 1356 GRBs in years five through ten. The data files containing the complete results are available from the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center.
ABSTRACT One of the most powerful gamma-ray bursts, GRB 130427A was swiftly detected from GeV γ-rays to optical wavelengths. In the GeV band, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi ...Gamma-Ray Space Telescope observed the highest-energy photon ever recorded of 95 GeV and a bright peak in the early phase followed by emission temporally extended for more than 20 hr. In the optical band, a bright flash with a magnitude of 7.03 0.03 in the time interval from 9.31 to 19.31 s after the trigger was reported by RAPTOR in r band. We study the origin of the GeV γ-ray emission, using the multiwavelength observation detected in X-ray and optical bands. The origin of the temporally extended LAT, X-ray, and optical flux is naturally interpreted as synchrotron radiation, and the 95 GeV photon and the integral flux upper limits placed by the high-altitude water Cerenkov observatory are consistent with synchrotron self-Compton from an adiabatic forward shock propagating into the stellar wind of its progenitor. The extreme LAT peak and the bright optical flash are explained through synchrotron self-Compton and synchrotron emission from the reverse shock, respectively, when the ejecta evolves in the thick-shell regime and carries a significant magnetic field.
Binary neutron star mergers are believed to eject significant masses with a diverse range of velocities. Once these ejected materials begin to be decelerated by a homogeneous medium, relativistic ...electrons are mainly cooled down by synchrotron radiation, generating a multiwavelength long-lived afterglow. Analytic and numerical methods illustrate that the outermost matter, the merger shock-breakout material, can be parametrized by power-law velocity distributions . Considering that the shock-breakout material is moving on-axis toward the observer and the relativistic jet off-axis, we compute the light curves during the relativistic and the lateral expansion phase. As a particular case, we successfully describe the X-ray, optical, and radio light curves alongside the spectral energy distribution from the recently discovered gravitational-wave transient GW170817, when the merger shock-breakout material moves with mildly relativistic velocities and achieves the near-Newtonian phase and the jet moves with relativistic velocities. Future electromagnetic counterpart observations of this binary system could be able to evaluate different properties of these light curves.
ABSTRACT The bright, short, and hard GRB 090510 was detected by all instruments aboard the Fermi and Swift satellites. The multiwavelength observations of this burst presented similar features to the ...Fermi-LAT-detected gamma-ray bursts. In the framework of the external shock model of early afterglow, a leptonic scenario that evolves in a homogeneous medium is proposed to revisit GRB 090510 and explain the multiwavelength light curve observations presented in this burst. These observations are consistent with the evolution of a jet before and after the jet break. The long-lasting LAT, X-ray, and optical fluxes are explained in the synchrotron emission from the adiabatic forward shock. Synchrotron self-Compton emission from the reverse shock is consistent with the bright LAT peak provided that the progenitor environment is entrained with strong magnetic fields. It could provide compelling evidence of magnetic field amplification in the neutron star merger.
Abstract
Very high energy (VHE) emission is usually interpreted in the synchrotron self-Compton scenario and expected from the low-redshift and high-luminosity gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), such as GRB ...180720B and GRB 190114C. Recently, the H.E.S.S. telescopes reported VHE emission from one of the closest bursts, GRB 190829A, which was associated with the supernova 2019oyw. In this paper, we present a temporal and spectral analysis from optical bands to the Fermi-LAT energy range over multiple observational periods beginning after the trigger time and extending for almost 3 months. We show that the X-ray and optical observations are consistent with synchrotron forward-shock emission evolving between the characteristic and cooling spectral breaks during the early and late afterglow in a uniform-density medium. Modeling the light curves together with the spectral energy distribution, we show that the outflow expanded with an initial bulk Lorentz factor of Γ ∼ 30, which is high for low-luminosity GRBs and low for high-luminosity GRBs. The values of the initial bulk Lorentz factor and the isotropic-equivalent energy suggest that GRB 190829A is an intermediate-luminosity burst; consequently, it becomes the first burst of this class to be detected in the VHE gamma-ray band by an imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope and, in turn, the first event to not be simultaneously observed by the Fermi-LAT instrument. Analyzing the intermediate-luminosity bursts with
z
≲ 0.2, such as GRB 130702A, we show that bursts with intermediate luminosities are potential candidates to be detected in VHEs.