We report on the detection of a bright, short, structured X-ray burst coming from the supernova remnant RCW 103 on 2016 June 22 caught by the Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) monitor, and on the ...follow-up campaign made with Swift/X-ray Telescope, Swift/UV/Optical Telescope, and the optical/near-infrared (NIR) Gamma-Ray burst Optical and Near-infrared Detector. The characteristics of this flash, such as duration and spectral shape, are consistent with typical short bursts observed from soft gamma repeaters. The BAT error circle at 68 per cent confidence range encloses the point-like X-ray source at the centre of the nebula, 1E 161348-5055. Its nature has been long debated due to a periodicity of 6.67 h in X-rays, which could indicate either an extremely slow pulsating neutron star, or the orbital period of a very compact X-ray binary system. We found that 20 min before the BAT trigger, the soft X-ray emission of 1E 161348-5055 was a factor of ~100 higher than measured 2 yr earlier, indicating that an outburst had already started. By comparing the spectral and timing characteristics of the source in the 2 yr before the outburst and after the BAT event, we find that, besides a change in luminosity and spectral shape, also the 6.67 h pulsed profile has significantly changed with a clear phase shift with respect to its low-flux profile. The UV/optical/NIR observations did not reveal any counterpart at the position of 1E 161348-5055. Based on these findings, we associate the BAT burst with 1E 161348-5055, we classify it as a magnetar, and pinpoint the 6.67 h periodicity as the magnetar spin period.
Bright X-ray Flares in Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows Burrows, D. N.; Romano, P.; Falcone, A. ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
09/2005, Letnik:
309, Številka:
5742
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows have provided important clues to the nature of these massive explosive events, providing direct information on the nearby environment and indirect information on the ...central engine that powers the burst. We report the discovery of two bright x-ray flares in GRB afterglows, including a giant flare comparable in total energy to the burst itself, each peaking minutes after the burst. These strong, rapid x-ray flares imply that the central engines of the bursts have long periods of activity, with strong internal shocks continuing for hundreds of seconds after the gamma-ray emission has ended.
Starting in 2006, Swift has been targeting a region of Asymptotically = to21' x 21' around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) with the onboard X-Ray Telescope. The short, quasi-daily observations offer a unique ...view of the long-term X-ray behavior of the supermassive black hole. We report on the data obtained between 2006 February and 2011 October, which encompasses 715 observations with a total accumulated exposure time of Asymptotically = to0.8 Ms. A total of six X-ray flares were detected with Swift, which all had an average 2-10 keV luminosity of L sub(X) Asymptotically = to (1 - 3) x 10 super(35) erg s super(-1) (assuming a distance of 8 kpc). This more than doubles the number of such bright X-ray flares observed from Sgr A*. One of the Swift-detected flares may have been softer than the other five, which would indicate that flares of similar intensity can have different spectral properties. The Swift campaign allows us to constrain the occurrence rate of bright (L sub(X) > ~ 10 super(35) erg s super(-1)) X-ray flares to be Asymptotically = to0.1-0.2 day super(-1), which is in line with previous estimates. This analysis of the occurrence rate and properties of the X-ray flares seen with Swift offers an important calibration point to assess whether the flaring behavior of Sgr A* changes as a result of its interaction with the gas cloud that is projected to make a close passage in 2013.
The brightest ultra-luminous X-ray source, ESO 243-49 HLX-1, with a 0.2-10 keV X-ray luminosity of up to 10{sup 42} erg s{sup -1}, provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of ...intermediate mass black holes (BHs). Although small-scale X-ray spectral variability has already been demonstrated, we have initiated a monitoring campaign with the X-ray Telescope (XRT) onboard the Swift satellite to search for luminosity-related spectral changes and to compare its behavior with the better-studied stellar mass BHs. In this Letter, we report a drop in the XRT count rate by a factor of approx8 which occurred simultaneously with a hardening of the X-ray spectrum. A second observation found that the source had re-brightened by a factor of approx21 which occurred simultaneously with a softening of the X-ray spectrum. This may be the first evidence for a transition between the low/hard and high/soft states.
We present time-dependent numerical calculations for fall-back disks relevant to gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in which the disk of material surrounding the black hole powering the GRB jet modulates the ...mass flow and hence the strength of the jet. Given the initial existence of a small mass 10--4 M near the progenitor with a circularization radius ~1010-1011 cm, an unavoidable consequence will be the formation of an 'external disk' whose outer edge continually moves to larger radii due to angular momentum transport and lack of a confining torque. For long GRBs, if the mass distribution in the initial fall-back disk traces the progenitor envelope, then a radius ~1011 cm gives a timescale ~104 s for the X-ray plateau. For late times t > 107 s a steepening due to a cooling front in the disk may have observational support in GRB 060729. For short GRBs, one expects most of the mass initially to lie at small radii <108 cm; however, the presence of even a trace amount ~10--9 M of high angular material can give a brief plateau in the light curve. By studying the plateaus in the X-ray decay of GRBs, which can last up to ~104 s after the prompt emission, Dainotti et al. find an apparent inverse relation between the X-ray luminosity at the end of the plateau and the duration of the plateau. We show that this relation may simply represent the fact that one is biased against detecting faint plateaus and therefore preferentially sampling the more energetic GRBs. If, however, there were a standard reservoir in fall-back mass, our model could reproduce the inverse X-ray luminosity-duration relation. We emphasize that we do not address the very steep, initial decays immediately following the prompt emission, which have been modeled by Lindner et al. as fall back of the progenitor core, and may entail the accretion of 1 M .
Studies of high-redshift gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) provide important information about the early Universe such as the rates of stellar collapsars and mergers, the metallicity content, constraints on ...the re-ionization period, and probes of the Hubble expansion. Rapid selection of high-z candidates from GRB samples reported in real time by dedicated space missions such as Swift is the key to identifying the most distant bursts before the optical afterglow becomes too dim to warrant a good spectrum. Here, we introduce 'machine-z', a redshift prediction algorithm and a 'high-z' classifier for Swift GRBs based on machine learning. Our method relies exclusively on canonical data commonly available within the first few hours after the GRB trigger. Using a sample of 284 bursts with measured redshifts, we trained a randomized ensemble of decision trees (random forest) to perform both regression and classification. Cross-validated performance studies show that the correlation coefficient between machine-z predictions and the true redshift is nearly 0.6. At the same time, our high-z classifier can achieve 80 per cent recall of true high-redshift bursts, while incurring a false positive rate of 20 per cent. With 40 per cent false positive rate the classifier can achieve approximately 100 per cent recall. The most reliable selection of high-redshift GRBs is obtained by combining predictions from both the high-z classifier and the machine-z regressor.
ABSTRACT The Andromeda Galaxy recurrent nova M31N 2008-12a had been observed in eruption 10 times, including yearly eruptions from 2008 to 2014. With a measured recurrence period of days (we believe ...the true value to be half of this) and a white dwarf very close to the Chandrasekhar limit, M31N 2008-12a has become the leading pre-explosion supernova type Ia progenitor candidate. Following multi-wavelength follow-up observations of the 2013 and 2014 eruptions, we initiated a campaign to ensure early detection of the predicted 2015 eruption, which triggered ambitious ground- and space-based follow-up programs. In this paper we present the 2015 detection, visible to near-infrared photometry and visible spectroscopy, and ultraviolet and X-ray observations from the Swift observatory. The LCOGT 2 m (Hawaii) discovered the 2015 eruption, estimated to have commenced at August 28.28 0.12 UT. The 2013-2015 eruptions are remarkably similar at all wavelengths. New early spectroscopic observations reveal short-lived emission from material with velocities ∼13,000 km s−1, possibly collimated outflows. Photometric and spectroscopic observations of the eruption provide strong evidence supporting a red giant donor. An apparently stochastic variability during the early supersoft X-ray phase was comparable in amplitude and duration to past eruptions, but the 2013 and 2015 eruptions show evidence of a brief flux dip during this phase. The multi-eruption Swift/XRT spectra show tentative evidence of high-ionization emission lines above a high-temperature continuum. Following Henze et al. (2015a), the updated recurrence period based on all known eruptions is days, and we expect the next eruption of M31N 2008-12a to occur around 2016 mid-September.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous explosions in the Universe, yet the nature and physical properties of their energy sources are far from understood. Very important clues, however, can be ...inferred by studying the afterglows of these events. We present optical and X-ray observations of GRB 130831A obtained by Swift, Chandra, Skynet, Reionization And Transients Infra-Red camera, Maidanak, International Scientific Optical-Observation Network, Nordic Optical Telescope, Liverpool Telescope and Gran Telescopio Canarias. This burst shows a steep drop in the X-ray light curve at ≃105 s after the trigger, with a power-law decay index of α ∼ 6. Such a rare behaviour cannot be explained by the standard forward shock (FS) model and indicates that the emission, up to the fast decay at 105 s, must be of ‘internal origin’, produced by a dissipation process within an ultrarelativistic outflow. We propose that the source of such an outflow, which must produce the X-ray flux for ≃1 d in the cosmological rest frame, is a newly born magnetar or black hole. After the drop, the faint X-ray afterglow continues with a much shallower decay. The optical emission, on the other hand, shows no break across the X-ray steep decrease, and the late-time decays of both the X-ray and optical are consistent. Using both the X-ray and optical data, we show that the emission after ≃105 s can be explained well by the FS model. We model our data to derive the kinetic energy of the ejecta and thus measure the efficiency of the central engine of a GRB with emission of internal origin visible for a long time. Furthermore, we break down the energy budget of this GRB into the prompt emission, the late internal dissipation, the kinetic energy of the relativistic ejecta, and compare it with the energy of the associated supernova, SN 2013 fu.
Swift BAT Survey of AGNs Tueller, J; Mushotzky, R. F; Barthelmy, S ...
The Astrophysical journal,
07/2008, Letnik:
681, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We present the results of the analysis of the first 9 months of data of the Swift BAT survey of AGNs in the 14-195 keV band. Using archival X-ray data or follow-up Swift XRT observations, we have ...identified 129 (103 AGNs) of 130 objects detected at image and with significance >4.8 capital sigma . One source remains unidentified. These same X-ray data have allowed measurement of the X-ray properties of the objects. We fit a power law to the image distribution, and find the slope to be image. Characterizing the differential luminosity function data as a broken power law, we find a break luminosity image (erg s super(-1)) = 43.85 +/- 0.26, a low-luminosity power law slope image, and a high-luminosity power law slope image, similar to the values that have been reported based on INTEGRAL data. We obtain a mean photon index 1.98 in the 14-195 keV band, with an rms spread of 0.27. Integration of our luminosity function gives a local volume density of AGNs above image erg simage of image Mpcimage, which is about 10% of the total luminous local galaxy density above image. We have obtained X-ray spectra from the literature and from Swift XRT follow-up observations. These show that the distribution of image is essentially flat from image to image cmimage, with 50% of the objects having column densities of less than image cmimage. BAT Seyfert galaxies have a median redshift of 0.03, a maximum image luminosity of 45.1, and approximately half have image.
Context.
Hard X-ray properties of beamed active galactic nuclei have been published in the 105-month
Swift
/BAT catalog, but there have not been any studies carried out so far on a well-defined, ...radio-selected sample of low-peaked blazars in the hard X-ray band.
Aims.
Using the statistically complete MOJAVE-1 sample, we aim to determine the hard X-ray properties of radio-selected blazars, including the enigmatic group of gamma-ray-faint blazars. Additionally, we aim to determine the contribution of radio-selected low-peaked blazars to the diffuse cosmic X-ray background (CXB).
Methods.
We determined photon indices, fluxes, and luminosities in the range of 20 keV–100 keV of the X-ray spectra of blazars and other extragalactic jets from the MOJAVE-1 sample, derived from the 105-month
Swift
/BAT survey. We calculated log
N
–log
S
distributions and determined the luminosity functions.
Results.
The majority of the MOJAVE-1 blazars are found to be hard X-ray emitters albeit many at low count rates. The log
N
–log
S
distribution for the hard X-ray emission of radio-selected blazars is clearly non-Euclidean, in contrast to the radio flux density distribution. Approximately 0.2% of the CXB in the 20 keV–100 keV band can be resolved into MOJAVE-1 blazars.
Conclusions.
The peculiar log
N
–log
S
distribution disparity might be attributed to different evolutionary paths in the X-ray and radio bands, as tested by luminosity-function modeling. X-ray variability can be ruled out as the dominant contributor. Low-peaked blazars constitute an intrinsically different source population in terms of CXB contribution compared to similar studies of X-ray-selected blazars. The hard X-ray flux and spectral index can serve as a good proxy for the gamma-ray detection probability of individual sources. Future observations combining deep X-ray survey, for example, with eROSITA, and targeted gamma-ray observations with CTA can benefit strongly from the tight connection between these high-energy bands for the different blazar sub-classes.
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