A search for pulsations in short gamma-ray bursts to constrain their progenitors

We searched for periodic and quasiperiodic signal in the prompt emission of a sample of 44 bright short gamma-ray bursts detected with Fermi/GBM, Swift/BAT, and CGRO/BATSE. The aim was to look for the observational signature of quasiperiodic jet precession which is expected from black hole-neutron star mergers, but not from double neutron star systems. Thus, this kind of search holds the key to identify the progenitor systems of short GRBs and, in the wait for gravitational wave detection, represents the only direct way to constrain the progenitors. We tailored our search to the nature of the expected signal by properly stretching the observed light curves by an increasing factor with time, after calibrating the technique on synthetic curves. In none of the GRBs of our sample we found evidence for periodic or quasiperiodic signals. In particular, for the 7 unambiguously short GRBs with best S/N we obtained significant upper limits to the amplitude of the possible oscillations. This result suggests that BH-NS systems do not dominate the population of short GRB progenitors as described by the kinematic model of Stone, Loeb, & Berger (2013).Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted to ApJ, added reference

Average power density spectrum of long GRBs detected with BeppoSAX/GRBM and with Fermi/GBM

From past experiments the average power density spectrum (PDS) of GRBs with unknown redshift was found to be modelled from 0.01 to 1 Hz with a power-law, f^(-alpha), with alpha broadly consistent with 5/3. Recent analyses of the Swift/BAT catalogue showed analogous results in the 15-150 keV band. We carried out the same analysis on the bright GRBs detected by BeppoSAX/GRBM and Fermi/GBM. The BeppoSAX/GRBM data, in the energy range 40-700 keV and with 7.8 and 0.5-ms time resolutions, allowed us to explore for the first time the average PDS at very high frequencies (up to 1 kHz) and reveal a break around 1-2 Hz, previously found in CGRO/BATSE data. The Fermi/GBM data, in the energy band 8-1000 keV, allowed us to explore for the first time the average PDS within a broad energy range. Our results confirm and extend the energy dependence of the PDS slope, according to which harder photons have shallower PDS.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, accepted to MNRA

A common stochastic process rules gamma-ray burst prompt emission and X-ray flares

Prompt gamma-ray and early X-ray afterglow emission in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are characterized by a bursty behavior and are often interspersed with long quiescent times. There is compelling evidence that X-ray flares are linked to prompt gamma-rays. However, the physical mechanism that leads to the complex temporal distribution of gamma-ray pulses and X-ray flares is not understood. Here we show that the waiting time distribution (WTD) of pulses and flares exhibits a power-law tail extending over 4 decades with index ~2 and can be the manifestation of a common time-dependent Poisson process. This result is robust and is obtained on different catalogs. Surprisingly, GRBs with many (>=8) gamma-ray pulses are very unlikely to be accompanied by X-ray flares after the end of the prompt emission (3.1 sigma Gaussian confidence). These results are consistent with a simple interpretation: an hyperaccreting disk breaks up into one or a few groups of fragments, each of which is independently accreted with the same probability per unit time. Prompt gamma-rays and late X-ray flares are nothing but different fragments being accreted at the beginning and at the end, respectively, following the very same stochastic process and likely the same mechanism.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted by Ap

The Gamma--Ray Burst catalog obtained with the Gamma Ray Burst Monitor aboard BeppoSAX

We report on the catalog of Gamma--Ray Bursts (GRBs) detected with the Gamma Ray Burst Monitor aboard the BeppoSAX satellite. It includes 1082 GRBs with 40--700 keV fluences in the range from $1.3\times 10^{-7}$ to $4.5\times 10^{-4}$ erg cm$^{-2}$, and with 40--700 keV peak fluxes from $3.7\times 10^{-8}$ to $7.0\times 10^{-5}$ erg cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$. We report in the catalog some relevant parameters of each GRB and discuss the derived statistical properties.Comment: 48 pages, 14 figures, 4 Tables. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Supplemen

Constraints on the environment and energetics of the Broad-Line Ic SN2014ad from deep radio and X-ray observations

Broad-line type Ic Supernovae (BL-Ic SNe) are characterized by high ejecta velocity ($\gtrsim 10^4$ km s$^{-1}$) and are sometimes associated with the relativistic jets typical of long duration ($\gtrsim 2$ s) Gamma-Ray Bursts (L-GRBs). The reason why a small fraction of BL-Ic SNe harbor relativistic jets is not known. Here we present deep X-ray and radio observations of the BL-Ic SN2014ad extending from $13$ to $930$ days post explosion. SN2014ad was not detected at either frequency and has no observational evidence of a GRB counterpart. The proximity of SN2014ad ($d\sim 26$ Mpc) enables very deep constraints on the progenitor mass-loss rate $\dot{M}$ and on the total energy of the fast ejecta $E$. We consider two synchrotron emission scenarios for a wind-like circumstellar medium (CSM): (i) uncollimated non-relativistic ejecta, and (ii) off-axis relativistic jet. Within the first scenario our observations are consistent with GRB-less BL-Ic SNe characterized by a modest energy budget of their fast ejecta ($E \lesssim 10^{45}$ erg), like SNe 2002ap and 2010ay. For jetted explosions, we cannot rule out a GRB with $E \lesssim 10^{51}$ erg (beam-corrected) with a narrow opening angle ($\theta_j \sim 5^{\circ}$) observed moderately off-axis ($\theta_{\rm obs} \gtrsim 30^{\circ}$) and expanding in a very low CSM density ($\dot{M}$ $\lesssim 10^{-6}$ M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$). Our study shows that off-axis low-energy jets expanding in a low-density medium cannot be ruled out even in the most nearby BL-Ic SNe with extensive deep observations, and might be a common feature of BL-Ic SNe.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Ap

Spectral catalogue of bright gamma-ray bursts detected with the BeppoSAX/GRBM

The emission process responsible for the so-called "prompt" emission of gamma-ray bursts is still unknown. A number of empirical models fitting the typical spectrum still lack a satisfactory interpretation. A few GRB spectral catalogues derived from past and present experiments are known in the literature and allow to tackle the issue of spectral properties of gamma-ray bursts on a statistical ground. We extracted and studied the time-integrated photon spectra of the 200 brightest GRBs observed with the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor which flew aboard the BeppoSAX mission (1996-2002) to provide an independent statistical characterisation of GRB spectra. The spectra were fit with three models: a simple power-law, a cut-off power law or a Band function. The typical photon spectrum of a bright GRB consists of a low-energy index around 1.0 and a peak energy of the nuFnu spectrum E_p~240 keV in agreement with previous results on a sample of bright CGRO/BATSE bursts. Spectra of ~35% of GRBs can be fit with a power-law with a photon index around 2, indicative of peak energies either close to or outside the GRBM energy boundaries. We confirm the correlation between E_p and fluence, with a logarithmic dispersion of 0.13 around the power-law with index 0.21+-0.06. The low-energy and peak energy distributions are not yet explained in the current literature. The capability of measuring time-resolved spectra over a broadband energy range, ensuring precise measurements of parameters such as E_p, will be crucial for future experiments (abridged).Comment: 28 pages, 20 figures, 3 tables, accepted to A&

A New Frequency-Luminosity Relation for Long GRBs?

We have studied power density spectra (PDS) of 206 long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). We fitted the PDS with a simple power-law and extracted the exponent of the power-law (alpha) and the noise-crossing threshold frequency (f_th). We find that the distribution of the extracted alpha peaks around -1.4 and that of f_th around 1 Hz. In addition, based on a sub-set of 58 bursts with known redshifts, we show that the redshift-corrected threshold frequency is positively correlated with the isotropic peak luminosity. The correlation coefficient is 0.57 +/- 0.03.Comment: 9 pages, 17 figures, 1 table; Accepted for publication in MNRA

The GRB Variability/Peak Luminosity Correlation: new results

We report test results of the correlation between time variability and peak luminosity of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), using a larger sample (32) of GRBs with known redshift than that available to Reichart et al. (2001), and using as variability measure that introduced by these authors. The results are puzzling. Assuming an isotropic-equivalent peak luminosity, as done by Reichart et al. (2001), a correlation is still found, but it is less relevant, and inconsistent with a power law as previously reported. Assuming as peak luminosity that corrected for GRB beaming for a subset of 16 GRBs with known beaming angle, the correlation becomes little less significant.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, MNRAS, accepte

Constraining duty cycles through a Bayesian technique

The duty cycle (DC) of astrophysical sources is generally defined as the fraction of time during which the sources are active. However, DCs are generally not provided with statistical uncertainties, since the standard approach is to perform Monte Carlo bootstrap simulations to evaluate them, which can be quite time consuming for a large sample of sources. As an alternative, considerably less time-consuming approach, we derived the theoretical expectation value for the DC and its error for sources whose state is one of two possible, mutually exclusive states, inactive (off) or flaring (on), as based on a finite set of independent observational data points. Following a Bayesian approach, we derived the analytical expression for the posterior, the conjugated distribution adopted as prior, and the expectation value and variance. We applied our method to the specific case of the inactivity duty cycle (IDC) for supergiant fast X-ray transients. We also studied IDC as a function of the number of observations in the sample. Finally, we compare the results with the theoretical expectations. We found excellent agreement with our findings based on the standard bootstrap method. Our Bayesian treatment can be applied to all sets of independent observations of two-state sources, such as active galactic nuclei, X-ray binaries, etc. In addition to being far less time consuming than bootstrap methods, the additional strength of this approach becomes obvious when considering a well-populated class of sources ($N_{\rm src} \geq 50$) for which the prior can be fully characterized by fitting the distribution of the observed DCs for all sources in the class, so that, through the prior, one can further constrain the DC of a new source by exploiting the information acquired on the DC distribution derived from the other sources. [Abridged]Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Supporting material at http://www.ifc.inaf.it/~romano/Sfxts/IDCSims/index.htm

Autocorrelation analysis of GRBM–Beppo-SAX burst data

An autocorrelation function (ACF) analysis was performed on 17 gamma-ray bursts with known redshift, using data from the GRBM on board Beppo-SAX. When corrected from the cosmic time dilation effect, the ACFs show a bimodal distribution at about half-maximum, in agreement with a previous study based on BATSE and Konus burst data. Although the results show more dispersion, the separation between the two classes is highly significant