CONSTRAINTS ON VERY HIGH ENERGY EMISSION FROM GRB 130427A
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Barnard College, Columbia University, NY 10027 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130 (United States)
- Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Amado, AZ 85645 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 (United States)
- Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics and Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
- Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 (United States)
- Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, 14476 Potsdam-Golm (Germany)
- Astronomy Department, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, Chicago, IL 60605 (United States)
- Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR), University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 (United States)
Prompt emission from the very fluent and nearby (z = 0.34) gamma-ray burst GRB 130427A was detected by several orbiting telescopes and by ground-based, wide-field-of-view optical transient monitors. Apart from the intensity and proximity of this GRB, it is exceptional due to the extremely long-lived high-energy (100 MeV to 100 GeV) gamma-ray emission, which was detected by the Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope for ∼70 ks after the initial burst. The persistent, hard-spectrum, high-energy emission suggests that the highest-energy gamma rays may have been produced via synchrotron self-Compton processes though there is also evidence that the high-energy emission may instead be an extension of the synchrotron spectrum. VERITAS, a ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope array, began follow-up observations of GRB 130427A ∼71 ks (∼20 hr) after the onset of the burst. The GRB was not detected with VERITAS; however, the high elevation of the observations, coupled with the low redshift of the GRB, make VERITAS a very sensitive probe of the emission from GRB 130427A for E > 100 GeV. The non-detection and consequent upper limit derived place constraints on the synchrotron self-Compton model of high-energy gamma-ray emission from this burst.
- OSTI ID:
- 22364597
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 795, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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