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A New Population of High-Redshift Short-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts

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

© 2007. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
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1 Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101

2 Princeton University Observatory, Peyton Hall, Ivy Lane, Princeton, NJ 08544

3 Hubble Fellow

4 Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, 525 Davey Laboratory, University Park, PA 16802

5 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822

6 Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, 105-24, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

7 Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545

8 Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637

9 Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Mount Stromlo Observatory, via Cotter Road, Weston Creek, ACT 2611, Australia

10 Space Radiation Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Mail Stop 220-47, Pasadena, CA 91125

11 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, NM 87801

12 Pomona College Department of Physics and Astronomy, 610 North College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711

13 Department of Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK

14 Gemini Observatory, 670 North Aohoku Place, Hilo, HI 96720

15 Department of Physics, Rutherford Physics Building, McGill University, 3600 University Street, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8, Canada

16 Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington, DC 20015

Dates

Received 2006 November 3
Accepted 2007 March 22

Citation

E. Berger et al 2007 ApJ 664 1000

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1086/518762

Keywords

gamma rays: bursts

Journal RSS feed

0004-637X/664/2/1000

Abstract

The redshift distribution of the short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is a crucial, but currently fragmentary, clue to the nature of their progenitors. Here we present optical observations of nine short GRBs obtained with Gemini, Magellan, and the Hubble Space Telescope. We detect the afterglows and host galaxies of two short bursts, and host galaxies for two additional bursts with known optical afterglow positions, and five with X-ray positions (lesssim6'' radius). In eight of the nine cases we find that the most probable host galaxies are faint, R ≈ 23-26.5 mag, and are therefore starkly different from the first few short GRB hosts with R ≈ 17-22 mag and z lesssim 0.5. Indeed, we measure spectroscopic redshifts of z ≈ 0.4-1.1 for the four brightest hosts. A comparison to large field galaxy samples, as well as the hosts of long GRBs and previous short GRBs, indicates that the fainter hosts likely reside at z gsim 1. Our most conservative limit is that at least half of the five hosts without a known redshift reside at z > 0.7 (97% confidence level), suggesting that about img1.gif to img2.gif of all short GRBs originate at higher redshifts than previously determined. This has two important implications: (1) we constrain the acceptable age distributions to a wide lognormal (σ gsim 1) with τ* ~ 4-8 Gyr, or to a power law, P(τ) ∝ τn, with -1 lesssim n lesssim 0; and (2) the inferred isotropic energies, Eγ,iso ~ 1050-1052 ergs, are significantly larger than ~1048-1049 ergs for the low-redshift, short GRBs, indicating a large spread in energy release or jet opening angles. Finally, we reiterate the importance of short GRBs as potential gravitational-wave sources and find a conservative detection rate with the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) of ~2-6 yr-1.

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