NuSTAR observations of GRB 130427A establish a single component synchrotron afterglow origin for the late optical to multi-GEV emission
- NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, AL (United States)
- The Open Univ. of Israel, Ra'anana (Israel)
- NASA Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
- Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States). SLAC National Accelerator Lab.
- Univ. College London, Surrey (United Kingdom)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Technical Univ. of Denmark, Lyngby (Denmark)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Naval Research Lab., Washington, D.C. (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
- INAF - Ossevatorio Astronomico di Brera, Merate (Italy)
- Liverpool John Moores Univ., Liverpool (United Kingdom)
Here, GRB 130427A occurred in a relatively nearby galaxy; its prompt emission had the largest GRB fluence ever recorded. The afterglow of GRB 130427A was bright enough for the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR) to observe it in the 3-79 keV energy range long after its prompt emission (~1.5 and 5 days). This range, where afterglow observations were previously not possible, bridges an important spectral gap. Combined with Swift, Fermi, and ground-based optical data, NuSTAR observations unambiguously establish a single afterglow spectral component from optical to multi-GeV energies a day after the event, which is almost certainly synchrotron radiation. Such an origin of the late-time Fermi/Large Area Telescope >10 GeV photons requires revisions in our understanding of collisionless relativistic shock physics.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 1356552
- Journal Information:
- The Astrophysical Journal. Letters, Vol. 779, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-8205
- Publisher:
- Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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