Gamma-Ray Bursts: the Most Powerful Cosmic Explosions L
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Gamma-Ray Bursts: the Most Powerful Cosmic Explosions L. KAPER1, A. CASTRO-TIRADO 2, A. FRUCHTER 3, J. GREINER4, J. HJORTH 5, E. PIAN 6, M. ANDERSEN7, K. BEUERMANN 8, M. BOER9, I. BURUD 3, A. JAUNSEN 5, B. JENSEN 5, J.M. CASTRO CERÓN10, S. ELLISON11, F. FRONTERA12, J. FYNBO13, N. GEHRELS14, J. GOROSABEL2, J. HEISE15, F. HESSMAN16, K. HURLEY17, S. KLOSE16, C. KOUVELIOTOU18, N. MASETTI12, P. MØLLER13, E. PALAZZI12, H. PEDERSEN 5, L. PIRO19, K. REINSCH 8, J. RHOADS 3, E. ROL1, I. SALAMANCA1, N. TANVIR20, P.M. VREESWIJK1, R.A.M.J. WIJERS1, T. WIKLIND 21, A. ZEH16, E.P.J. VAN DEN HEUVEL1 1Astronomical Institute “Anton Pannekoek”, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 2IAA-CSIC, Granada, Spain; 3STScI, Baltimore, USA; 4MPE Garching, Germany; 5Copenhagen University Observatory, Denmark; 6Trieste, Italy; 7Potsdam, Germany; 8Universitäts Sternwarte, Göttingen, Germany; 9CESR/CNRS, Toulouse, France; 10Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada, Cádiz, Spain; 11ESO Paranal, Chile; 12Bologna, Italy; 13ESO Garching, Germany; 14NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, USA; 15SRON Utrecht, The Netherlands; 16Thüringer Landessternwarte (Tautenburg, Germany); 17UC Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, USA; 18NASA/MSFC, Huntsville, USA; 19Rome, Italy; 20Hertfordshire, United Kingdom; 21Onsala, Sweden 1. Introduction Metzger et al. 1997), active collabora- States of America. The nodes take tions between many observatories turns for being “on duty” for periods of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are brief around the world has resulted in a time- two weeks. Starting September 2002 flashes of cosmic γ-rays, first detected ly and detailed study of several dozen our collaboration will be supported by a in data from the US military Vela satel- GRBs. From the start ESO has played Research and Training Network funded lites in 1967 that were launched to a very important role in the identifica- by the European Commission for a pe- verify the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty tion and analysis of the optical and in- riod of four years. (Klebesadel et al. 1973). Lacking a dis- frared afterglows. Gamma-ray detec- tance scale, the physical nature of tors onboard spacecraft orbiting the 3. GRBs and their afterglows GRBs remained a mystery for thirty Earth or exploring the solar system pro- years. Their cosmological origin was vide the GRB alerts, which are prompt- GRBs are short flashes of γ-rays, suggested by their isotropic sky distri- ly announced on the Gamma-ray burst with a duration ranging from several bution, demonstrated in the early 1990s Circular Network (GCN); these trigger milliseconds to tens of minutes, and in by the BATSE experiment onboard the immediate follow-up observations at most cases an observed peak energy Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory ground-based observatories. By build- around 100 keV. The daily rate of (Fig. 1). ing up a network of astronomers at ob- GRBs, detectable from Earth, is about However, the definite proof of their servatories all around the world, it be- two (Paciesas et al. 1999). The γ-ray distant, extragalactic nature came from comes possible to quickly (within light curves are extremely diverse, the discovery of their rapidly fading af- hours) respond to a GRB alert (from some very smooth, others with numer- terglows at X-ray, optical, and radio one or both hemispheres) and to locate ous spikes. BATSE data showed that wavelengths in 1997, thanks to the and monitor the afterglow. there are two distinct classes of GRBs: alerts of the Italian-Dutch BeppoSAX Here we report on behalf of the a class with a short duration (less satellite. Absorption and emission lines GRACE consortium, the Gamma-Ray than 2 seconds) and relatively hard in the afterglow spectra provided red- burst Afterglow Collaboration at ESO 1. spectra, and a class of long-duration shifts in the range z = 0.1–4.5, corre- The GRACE consortium was awarded bursts with softer spectra. It is impor- sponding to distances of several billion an ESO Large Programme that started tant to note that only afterglows of the light-years out to the edge of the visible in April 2000 and ended in March 2002. latter population have been observed universe. This made it clear that GRBs So far, the GRACE collaboration has so far: it is not known whether short represent the most powerful explosions identified most of the known GRB opti- bursts produce afterglows at all. The in the universe since the Big Bang. cal counterparts and has measured best limit obtained so far is for the There are strong indications that about two thirds of all known GRB red- short/hard HETE-II burst GRB 020531, GRBs are caused by highly relativistic, shifts. Currently, ESO observing time is for which Salamanca et al. (2002) did collimated outflows powered by the col- allocated to GRACE through normal not detect any afterglow candidate lapse of a massive star or by the merg- Target of Opportunity one-semester brighter than V ~ 25, just 20 hours after er of two compact objects. Their enor- programmes. Our collaboration is also the alert. mous brightness make GRBs powerful involved in GRB follow-up programmes In a previous Messenger paper probes of the distant and early uni- awarded observing time on the Hubble (Pedersen et al. 2000) the first scientif- verse, yielding information on the prop- Space Telescope (HST), the Chandra ic break-throughs in this field were re- erties of their host galaxies and the cos- X-ray observatory, and INTEGRAL. ported. The Italian-Dutch BeppoSAX mic star-formation history. GRACE consists of teams of as- satellite played a crucial role in these tronomers (“nodes”) based in Denmark, discoveries by rapidly determining the 2. The GRACE consortium Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, position of a GRB with arcminute preci- the United Kingdom and the United sion. Arcminute-sized error boxes Since the discovery of the first GRB match the typical field size of modern afterglow on 28 February 1997 (Costa (optical) detectors, so that it became et al. 1997, Van Paradijs et al. 1997, 1http://zon.wins.uva.nl/grb/grace/ feasible to detect the GRB afterglows, 37 Figure 1: This map shows the locations of a total of 2704 GRBs recorded with BATSE on board NASA’s Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory during its nine-year mission. The projection is in galactic coordinates; the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy is along the horizontal line at the middle of the figure. The burst locations are colour-coded based on the fluence, which is the energy flux of the burst integrated over the to- tal duration of the event. Long-duration, bright bursts appear in red, and short-duration, weak bursts appear in purple (credit BATSE team). which fade quickly, on a timescale of Besides HETE-II, satellites in the afterglow identification pipeline is nec- only a few days (the typical time profiles Interplanetary Network (IPN) provide essary. Our consortium has developed are t–α, with α ~ 1–2). burst positions, though at a low rate. such a pipeline using colour-colour dis- The High Energy Transient Explorer II The BeppoSAX mission was terminat- crimination techniques. The efficiency (HETE-II), launched in October 2000, ed on April 30, 2002, exactly 6 years af- of this procedure was demonstrated by was designed to provide very rapid (< 1 ter its launch. the discovery, at ESO, of the optical minute) and very precise positions (er- With Integral (launch October 2002) and near-infrared counterpart of GRB ror boxes down to arcseconds) of both and Swift (2003) the rate of GRB alerts 001011 (Gorosabel et al. 2002a). long- and short-duration bursts. This will definitely increase again. In prepa- Since the advent of rapid (within a mission has been one of the main ration for these missions, robotic tele- few hours to days) GRB locations2, 39 drivers of our ESO Large Programme, scopes are installed at ESO La Silla to alerts resulted in the detection of an but so far only few accurate HETE-II perform prompt follow-up of GRB alerts. positions have become available. Given the expected high data rate, a fast 2http://www.aip.de/People/Greiner/grbgen.html Figure 2: Left: VLT spectrum of GRB 990712 taken 12 hours after the burst. Absorption lines of Mg I and Mg II are detected, as well as sev- eral emission lines from the underlying bright (V ~ 22) host galaxy (from Vreeswijk et al. 2001). The redshift of the galaxy is z = 0.43. Right: A low-resolution FORS spectrum of the currently most-distant GRB 000131 at z = 4.5 (from Andersen et al. 2000). The redshift is determined from the Lyman break. 38 Figure 3: The fading afterglow of GRB 011121 at near-infrared wavelengths (1.2 µm, J band, Greiner et al. 2002). The field size is 40 × 40 arcseconds, North is up and East is to the left. On November 22, 2001, the afterglow is detected by NTT/SOFI at J = 17.5; 2 days later the afterglow has faded to J = 20.9. On February 9, 2002, the afterglow is not detected anymore (J > 24) in this superb VLT/ISAAC image (see- ing 0.4 arcsecond). The light sources near the position of GRB 011121 might represent some bright regions in the host galaxy. X-ray afterglow; 32 optical afterglows will provide accurate burst positions 5. The origin of GRBs: possible have been found (of which more than within a few minutes, many such bright progenitors half were discovered by our collabora- early afterglows become detectable. tion), and 20 radio afterglows (status From a variety of arguments, such as July 1, 2002). For many GRBs no after- 4. Evidence for collimation their total energy and the evidence for glow is found. Adverse observing con- collimation, the general expectation is ditions can explain many of these Assuming isotropic emission, the that a system consisting of a black hole non-detections.