Limits on Very High Energy Emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts with the Milagro Observatory
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)
The Milagro telescope monitors the northern sky for 100 GeV to 100 TeV transient emission through continuous very high energy wide-field observations. The large effective area and {approx} 100 GeV energy threshold of Milagro allow it to detect very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray burst emission with much higher sensitivity than previous instruments and a fluence sensitivity at VHE energies comparable to that of dedicated gamma-ray burst satellites at keV to MeV energies. Even in the absence of a positive detection, VHE observations can place important constraints on gamma-ray burst (GRB) progenitor and emission models. We present limits on the VHE flux of 40 s - 3 h duration transients nearby to earth, as well as sensitivity distributions which have been corrected for gamma-ray absorption by extragalactic background light and cosmological effects. The sensitivity distributions suggest that the typical intrinsic VHE fluence of GRBs is similar or weaker than the keV - MeV emission, and we demonstrate how these sensitivity distributions may be used to place observational constraints on the absolute VHE luminosity of gamma-ray bursts for any GRB emission and progenitor model.
- OSTI ID:
- 20630189
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 727, Issue 1; Conference: Symposium on gamma-ray bursts: 30 years of discovery, Santa Fe, NM (United States), 8-12 Sep 2003; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.1810823; (c) 2004 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); Milagro Collaboration; ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
A Strong Limit on the Very-high-energy Emission from GRB 150323A
Search for VHE emission from GRB with Milagro