Constraining the Long-lived Magnetar Remnants in Short Gamma-Ray Burst from Late-time Radio Observations

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-20-2020

Publication Title

The Astrophysical Journal

Volume

890

Issue

2

First page number:

1

Last page number:

10

Abstract

The joint detection of GW170817 and GRB 170817A indicated that at least a fraction of short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) originate from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. One possible remnant of a BNS merger is a rapidly rotating, strongly magnetized neutron star, which has been discussed as one possible central engine for gamma-ray bursts. For a rapidly rotating magnetar central engine, the deposition of the rotation energy into the ejecta launched from the merger could lead to bright radio emission. The brightness of radio emission years after an SGRB would provide an estimate of the kinetic energy of ejecta and, hence, a possible constraint on the BNS merger product. We perform a more detailed calculation on the brightness of radio emission from the interaction between the merger ejecta and circumburst medium in the magnetar scenario, invoking several important physical processes such as generic hydrodynamics, relativistic effects, and the deep Newtonian phase. We use the model to constrain the allowed parameter space for 15 SGRBs that have late radio observations. Our results show that an injection energy of E inj ~ 1052 erg is allowed for all the cases, which suggests that the possibility of a supramassive or hypermassive neutron star remnant is not disfavored by the available radio data.

Keywords

Gamma-ray bursts; Magnetar; Radio sources

Disciplines

Astrophysics and Astronomy

Language

English

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