Swift AND Fermi observations of x-ray flares: The case of late internal shock

Troja, Eleonora; Piro, Luigi; Vasileiou, Vlasios; Omodei, N.; Burgess, J. M.; Cutini, S.; Connaughton, V.; McEnery, J. E.

doi:10.1088/0004-637X/803/1/10

Title: Swift AND Fermi observations of x-ray flares: The case of late internal shock

Journal Article · Tue Apr 07 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/803/1/10· OSTI ID:1355162

Troja, Eleonora ^[1]; Piro, Luigi ^[2]; Vasileiou, Vlasios ^[3]; Omodei, N. ^[4]; Burgess, J. M. ^[5]; Cutini, S. ^[6]; Connaughton, V. ^[5]; McEnery, J. E. ^[7]

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
INAF-IAPS, Rome (Italy)
Univ. Montpellier 2 and CNRS/IN2P3, Montpellier (France)
Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States). SLAC National Accelerator Lab.
Univ. of Alabama, Huntsville, AL (United States)
ASI Science Data Center, Frascati (Italy)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)

Simultaneous Swift and Fermi observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) offer a unique broadband view of their afterglow emission, spanning more than 10 decades in energy. We present the sample of X-ray flares observed by both Swift and Fermi during the first three years of Fermi operations. While bright in the X-ray band, X-ray flares are often undetected at lower (optical), and higher (MeV to GeV) energies. We show that this disfavors synchrotron self-Compton processes as the origin of the observed X-ray emission. We compare the broadband properties of X-ray flares with the standard late internal shock model, and find that in this scenario, X-ray flares can be produced by a late-time relativistic (Γ > 50) outflow at radii R ~ 10¹³-10¹⁴ cm. As a result, this conclusion holds only if the variability timescale is significantly shorter than the observed flare duration, and implies that X-ray flares can directly probe the activity of the GRB central engine.

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Research Organization:: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-76SF00515

OSTI ID:: 1355162

Journal Information:: The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 803, Issue 1; ISSN 1538-4357

Publisher:: Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 18 works

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