CONSTRAINTS ON THE EMISSION MODEL OF THE 'NAKED-EYE BURST' GRB 080319B

Journal Article · Tue Jul 10 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/753/2/L31· OSTI ID:22047689

Abdo, A A; Abeysekara, A U; Linnemann, J T ^[1]; Allen, B T; Chen, C ^[2]; Aune, T ^[3]; Berley, D; Goodman, J A ^[4]; Christopher, G E; Kolterman, B E; Mincer, A I ^[5]; DeYoung, T ^[6]; Dingus, B L; Hoffman, C M ^[7]; Ellsworth, R W ^[8]; Gonzalez, M M ^[9]; Granot, J ^[10]; Hays, E; McEnery, J E ^[11]; Huentemeyer, P H ^[12] ; others, and

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, 3245 BioMedical Physical Sciences Building, East Lansing, MI 48824 (United States)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 (United States)
3. Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
4. Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (United States)
5. Department of Physics, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003 (United States)
6. Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
7. Group P-23, Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
8. School of Physics, Astronomy and Computational Sciences, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030 (United States)
9. Instituto de Astronomia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, D.F., Mexico 04510 (Mexico)
10. Open University of Israel, 1 University Road, POB 808, Ra'anana 43537 (Israel)
11. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
12. Department of Physics, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931 (United States)

On 2008 March 19, one of the brightest gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) ever recorded was detected by several ground- and space-based instruments spanning the electromagnetic spectrum from radio to gamma rays. With a peak visual magnitude of 5.3, GRB 080319B was dubbed the 'naked-eye' GRB, as an observer under dark skies could have seen the burst without the aid of an instrument. Presented here are results from observations of the prompt phase of GRB 080319B taken with the Milagro TeV observatory. The burst was observed at an elevation angle of 47 Degree-Sign . Analysis of the data is performed using both the standard air shower method and the scaler or single-particle technique, which results in a sensitive energy range that extends from {approx}5 GeV to >20 TeV. These observations provide the only direct constraints on the properties of the high-energy gamma-ray emission from GRB 080319B at these energies. No evidence for emission is found in the Milagro data, and upper limits on the gamma-ray flux above 10 GeV are derived. The limits on emission between {approx}25 and 200 GeV are incompatible with the synchrotron self-Compton model of gamma-ray production and disfavor a corresponding range (2 eV-16 eV) of assumed synchrotron peak energies. This indicates that the optical photons and soft ({approx}650 keV) gamma rays may not be produced by the same electron population.

• OSTI ID: 22047689
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Letters Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 753; ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTRONOMY
ASTROPHYSICS
COMPTON EFFECT
COSMIC GAMMA BURSTS
COSMIC PHOTONS
ELECTRONS
GAMMA RADIATION
GEV RANGE
KEV RANGE
PHOTON EMISSION
SYNCHROTRON RADIATION
TEV RANGE