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GRB 050408: A Bright Gamma-Ray Burst Probing an Atypical Galactic Environment

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and

© 2006. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
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Author e-mails

rfoley@astro.berkeley.edu

dperley@astro.berkeley.edu

dave@astro.berkeley.edu

jbloom@astro.berkeley.edu

weidong@astro.berkeley.edu

xavier@ucolick.org

cobb@astro.yale.edu

bailyn@astro.yale.edu

galdering@lbl.gov

mpkowalski@lbl.gov

saul@lbl.gov

cblake@cfa.harvard.edu

pgreen@head.cfa.harvard.edu

falco@cfa.harvard.edu

kroth@gemini.edu

kvolk@gemini.edu

hchen@oddjob.uchicago.edu

Author affiliations

1 Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411

2 Chandra Fellow

3 UCO/Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064

4 Department of Astronomy, Yale University, P.O. Box 208101, New Haven, CT 06520

5 Department of Astronomy, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637

6 E. O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720

7 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

8 F. L. Whipple Observatory, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box 6369, Amado, AZ 85645

9 Gemini Observatory, 670 North A`ohoku Place, Hilo, HI 96720

Dates

Received 2005 December 4
Accepted 2006 March 11

Citation

R. J. Foley et al 2006 ApJ 645 450

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1086/504313

Keywords

galaxies: ISM; galaxies: photometry; gamma rays: bursts; stars: formation

Journal RSS feed

0004-637X/645/1/450

Abstract

The bright GRB 050408 was localized by HETE-2 near local midnight in the Western Hemisphere, enabling an impressive ground-based follow-up effort, as well as space-based follow-up from Swift. The Swift data from the XRT and our own optical photometry and spectrum of the afterglow provide the cornerstone for our analysis. Under the traditional assumption that the visible wave band was above the peak synchrotron frequency and below the cooling frequency, the optical photometry of 0.03-5.03 days shows an afterglow decay corresponding to an electron energy index of plc = 2.05 ± 0.04, without a jet break as suggested by others. A break is seen in the X-ray data at early times (at ~12,600 s after the GRB). The spectral slope of the optical spectrum is consistent with plc assuming a host galaxy extinction of AV = 1.18 mag. The optical-NIR broadband spectrum is also consistent with p = 2.05 but prefers AV = 0.57 mag. The X-ray afterglow shows a break at 1.26 × 104 s, which may be the result of a refreshed shock. This burst stands out in that the optical and X-ray data suggest a large H I column density of Nimg1.gif ≈ 1022 cm-2; it is very likely a damped Lyα system, so the faintness of the host galaxy (MV > -18 mag) is noteworthy. Moreover, we detect extraordinarily strong Ti II absorption lines with a column density through the GRB host that exceeds the largest values observed for the Milky Way by 1 order of magnitude. Furthermore, the Ti II equivalent width is in the top 1% of Mg II absorption-selected QSOs. This suggests that the large-scale environment of GRB 050408 has significantly lower Ti depletion than our Galaxy and a large velocity width (δv > 150 km s-1).

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