On the connection of gamma-ray bursts and X-ray flashes in the BATSE and RHESSI databases
Classification of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) into groups has been intensively studied by various statistical tests in previous years. It has been suggested that there was a distinct group of GRBs, beyond the long and short ones, with intermediate durations. However, such a group is not securely confirm...
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Published in | Astrophysics and space science Vol. 361; no. 12; pp. 1 - 24 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Dordrecht
Springer Netherlands
01.12.2016
Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Classification of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) into groups has been intensively studied by various statistical tests in previous years. It has been suggested that there was a distinct group of GRBs, beyond the long and short ones, with intermediate durations. However, such a group is not securely confirmed yet. Strangely, concerning the spectral hardness, the observations from the
Swift
and
RHESSI
satellites give different results. For the
Swift
/BAT database it is found that the intermediate-duration bursts might well be related to so-called X-ray flashes (XRFs). On the other hand, for the
RHESSI
dataset the intermediate-duration bursts seem to be spectrally too hard to be given by XRFs. The connection of the intermediate-duration bursts and XRFs for the BATSE database is not clear as well. The purpose of this article is to check the relation between XRFs and GRBs for the BATSE and
RHESSI
databases, respectively. We use an empirical definition of XRFs introduced by other authors earlier. For the
RHESSI
database we also use a transformation between the detected counts and the fluences based on the simulated detector response function. The purpose is to compare the hardnesses of GRBs with the definition of XRFs. There is a 1.3–4.2 % fraction of XRFs in the whole BATSE database. The vast majority of the BATSE short bursts are not XRFs because only 0.7–5.7 % of the short bursts can be given by XRFs. However, there is a large uncertainty in the fraction of XRFs among the intermediate-duration bursts. The fraction of 1–85 % of the BATSE intermediate-duration bursts can be related to XRFs. For the long bursts this fraction is between 1.0 % and 3.4 %. The uncertainties in these fractions are large, however it can be claimed that all BATSE intermediate-duration bursts cannot be given by XRFs. At least 79 % of
RHESSI
short bursts, at least 53 % of
RHESSI
intermediate-duration bursts, and at least 45 % of
RHESSI
long bursts should not be given by XRFs. A simulation of XRFs observed by
HETE-2
and
Swift
has shown that
RHESSI
would detect, and in fact detected, only one long-duration XRF out of 26 ones observed by those two satellites. We arrive at the conclusion that the intermediate-duration bursts in the BATSE database can be partly populated by XRFs, but the
RHESSI
intermediate-duration bursts are most likely not given by XRFs. The results, claiming that the
Swift
/BAT intermediate-duration bursts are closely related to XRFs do not hold for the BATSE and
RHESSI
databases. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0004-640X 1572-946X |
DOI: | 10.1007/s10509-016-2960-4 |