Establishing the existence of harmonically-spaced lines in gamma-ray burst spectra using Bayesian inference. [GB 870303]

Conference · Mon Jul 05 04:00:00 EDT 1993 · AIP Conference Proceedings (American Institute of Physics); (United States)

OSTI ID:6076493

Graziani, C; Lamb, D Q ^[1]; Loredo, T J ^[2]; Fenimore, E E ^[3]; Murakami, T ^[4]; Yoshida, A ^[5]

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1. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
2. CRSR, Cornell University, NY 14853 (United States)
3. Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM 87545 (United States)
4. Institute of Space and Astronautical Research (Japan)
5. Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Japan)

We use a rigorous method derived from Bayesian inference to establish the existence of lines in the spectra of [gamma]-ray bursts. Line detection involves a comparison of nested models. The method amounts to the calculation of the odds [ital O] favoring models with lines over models without lines. [ital O] is given by the product of the maximum likelihood ratio and a second factor which includes the ratio of the posterior uncertainty of the line parameters to their prior uncertainty. The maximum likelihood ratio always favors the more complex model, since the likelihood of the more complex model can never be larger than that of the simpler model. The second factor penalizes the more complex model, since the posterior uncertainty for the extra parameters is generally smaller than their prior uncertainty. Thus an Ockham's Razor'' automatically appears in Bayesian model comparison.

• OSTI ID: 6076493
• Report Number(s): CONF-9210245--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings (American Institute of Physics); (United States) Journal Volume: 280:1
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

661300* -- Other Aspects of Physical Science-- (1992-)
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CALCULATION METHODS
COSMIC GAMMA BURSTS
COSMIC RADIATION
DATA ANALYSIS
ENERGY SPECTRA
IONIZING RADIATIONS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MATHEMATICS
PRIMARY COSMIC RADIATION
PROBABILISTIC ESTIMATION
RADIATIONS
SPECTRA
STATISTICS