A Peculiar Low-luminosity Short Gamma-ray Burst From A Double Neutron Star Merger Progenitor
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2018
Publication Title
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Volume
9
Issue
1
Abstract
Double neutron star (DNS) merger events are promising candidates of short gamma-ray burst (sGRB) progenitors as well as high-frequency gravitational wave (GW) emitters. On August 17, 2017, such a coinciding event was detected by both the LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave detector network as GW170817 and Gamma-Ray Monitor on board NASA's Fermi Space Telescope as GRB 170817A. Here, we show that the fluence and spectral peak energy of this sGRB fall into the lower portion of the distributions of known sGRBs. Its peak isotropic luminosity is abnormally low. The estimated event rate density above this luminosity is at least 190-160+ 440 Gpc-3 yr-1, which is close to but still below the DNS merger event rate density. This event likely originates from a structured jet viewed from a large viewing angle. There are similar faint soft GRBs in the Fermi archival data, a small fraction of which might belong to this new population of nearby, low-luminosity sGRBs. © 2018 The Author(s).
Language
English
Repository Citation
Zhang, B. B.,
Zhang, B.,
Sun, H.,
Lei, W. H.,
Gao, H.,
Li, Y.,
Shao, L.,
Zhao, Y.,
Hu, Y. D.,
Lü, H. J.,
Wu, X. F.,
Fan, X. L.,
Wang, G.,
Castro-Tirado, A. J.,
Zhang, S.,
Yu, B. Y.,
Cao, Y. Y.,
Liang, E. W.
(2018).
A Peculiar Low-luminosity Short Gamma-ray Burst From A Double Neutron Star Merger Progenitor.
Nature Communications, 9(1),
Nature Publishing Group.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02847-3