THE NEEDLE IN THE 100 deg{sup 2} HAYSTACK: UNCOVERING AFTERGLOWS OF FERMI GRBs WITH THE PALOMAR TRANSIENT FACTORY
- LIGO Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena CA 91101 (United States)
- Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 661, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH (United Kingdom)
- Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Koramangala, Bangalore 560 034 (India)
- Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, 6740 Cortona Drive, Suite 102, Goleta, CA 93117 (United States)
- Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411007 (India)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- CSPAR and Physics Department, University of Alabama in Huntsville, 320 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL 35899 (United States)
- Texas Tech University, Physics Department, Lubbock, TX 79409-1051 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
- Astrophysics Office, ZP12, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL 35812 (United States)
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n, E-18008, Granada (Spain)
- Benoziyo Center for Astrophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot (Israel)
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has greatly expanded the number and energy window of observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). However, the coarse localizations of tens to a hundred square degrees provided by the Fermi GRB Monitor instrument have posed a formidable obstacle to locating the bursts’ host galaxies, measuring their redshifts, and tracking their panchromatic afterglows. We have built a target-of-opportunity mode for the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory in order to perform targeted searches for Fermi afterglows. Here, we present the results of one year of this program: 8 afterglow discoveries out of 35 searches. Two of the bursts with detected afterglows (GRBs 130702A and 140606B) were at low redshift (z = 0.145 and 0.384, respectively) and had spectroscopically confirmed broad-line Type Ic supernovae. We present our broadband follow-up including spectroscopy as well as X-ray, UV, optical, millimeter, and radio observations. We study possible selection effects in the context of the total Fermi and Swift GRB samples. We identify one new outlier on the Amati relation. We find that two bursts are consistent with a mildly relativistic shock breaking out from the progenitor star rather than the ultra-relativistic internal shock mechanism that powers standard cosmological bursts. Finally, in the context of the Zwicky Transient Facility, we discuss how we will continue to expand this effort to find optical counterparts of binary neutron star mergers that may soon be detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo.
- OSTI ID:
- 22522338
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 806, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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