866 research outputs found
Observations of Early Optical Afterglows
The Swift Ultra-Violet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) has performed extensive
follow-up on 71 Swift Burst Alert Telescope triggered gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)
in its first ten months of operations. In this paper, we discuss some of the UV
and optical properties of UVOT detected afterglows such as XRF 050406, the
bright GRB 050525A, the high redshift GRB 050730, the early flaring GRB 050801,
and others. We also discuss some of the implications of why 75% of GRB
afterglows observed by UVOT in less than one hour are "dark."Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the 16th Annual
Astrophysics Conference in Maryland "Gamma Ray Bursts in the Swift Era,"
Washington, DC, November 29 - December 2, 200
Very Early Optical Afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts: Evidence for Relative Paucity of Detection
Very early observations with the Swift satellite of γ-ray burst (GRB) afterglows reveal that the optical component is not detected in a large number of cases. This is in contrast to the bright optical flashes previously discovered in some GRBs (e.g., GRB 990123 and GRB 021211). Comparisons of the X-ray afterglow flux to the optical afterglow flux and prompt γ-ray fluence is used to quantify the seemingly deficient optical, and in some cases X-ray, light at these early epochs. This comparison reveals that some of these bursts appear to have higher than normal γ-ray efficiencies. We discuss possible mechanisms and their feasibility for explaining the apparent lack of early optical emission. The mechanisms considered include, foreground extinction, circumburst absorption, Lyα blanketing and absorption due to high-redshift, low-density environments, rapid temporal decay, and intrinsic weakness of the reverse shock. Of these, foreground extinction, circumburst absorption, and high redshift provide the best explanations for most of the nondetections in our sample. There is tentative evidence of suppression of the strong reverse shock emission. This could be because of a Poynting flux-dominated flow or a pure nonrelativistic hydrodynamic reverse shock
The First Ten Years of Swift Supernovae
The Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer has proven to be an incredible platform
for studying the multiwavelength properties of supernova explosions. In its
first ten years, Swift has observed over three hundred supernovae. The
ultraviolet observations reveal a complex diversity of behavior across
supernova types and classes. Even amongst the standard candle type Ia
supernovae, ultraviolet observations reveal distinct groups. When the UVOT data
is combined with higher redshift optical data, the relative populations of
these groups appear to change with redshift. Among core-collapse supernovae,
Swift discovered the shock breakout of two supernovae and the Swift data show a
diversity in the cooling phase of the shock breakout of supernovae discovered
from the ground and promptly followed up with Swift. Swift observations have
resulted in an incredible dataset of UV and X-ray data for comparison with
high-redshift supernova observations and theoretical models. Swift's supernova
program has the potential to dramatically improve our understanding of stellar
life and death as well as the history of our universe.Comment: Invited review paper accepted into the Journal of High Energy
Astrophysics for the dedicated issue: "Swift: Ten Years of Discovery" 8
pages, 4 figure
Interpreting Flux from Broadband Photometry
We discuss the transformation of observed photometry into flux for the
creation of spectral energy distributions and the computation of bolometric
luminosities. We do this in the context of supernova studies, particularly as
observed with the Swift spacecraft, but the concepts and techniques should be
applicable to many other types of sources and wavelength regimes. Traditional
methods of converting observed magnitudes to flux densities are not very
accurate when applied to UV photometry. Common methods for extinction and the
integration of pseudo-bolometric fluxes can also lead to inaccurate results.
The sources of inaccuracy, though, also apply to other wavelengths. Because of
the complicated nature of translating broad-band photometry into monochromatic
flux densities, comparison between observed photometry and a spectroscopic
model is best done by comparing in the natural units of the observations. We
recommend that integrated flux measurements be made using a spectrum or
spectral energy distribution which is consistent with the multi-band photometry
rather than converting individual photometric measurements to flux densities,
linearly interpolating between the points, and integrating. We also highlight
some specific areas where the UV flux can be mischaracterized.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. 16 pages, 9
figures. A PDF file with wide-screen friendly figures is linked from this
blog post
http://ultravioletsupernova.blogspot.com/2016/08/interpreting-flux-from-broadband.htm
The measurement errors in the Swift-UVOT and XMM-OM
The probability of photon measurement in some photon counting
instrumentation, such as the Optical Monitor on the XMM-Newton satellite, and
the UVOT on the Swift satellite, does not follow a Poisson distribution due to
the detector characteristics, but a Binomial distribution. For a single-pixel
approximation, an expression was derived for the incident countrate as a
function of the measured count rate by Fordham, Moorhead and Galbraith (2000).
We show that the measured countrate error is binomial, and extend their
formalism to derive the error in the incident count rate. The error on the
incident count rate at large count rates is larger than the Poisson-error of
the incident count rate.Comment: 4 pages, 2 postscript figures, submitted to MNRA
GRB Flares: UV/Optical Flaring (Paper I)
We present a new algorithm for the detection of flares in gamma-ray burst
(GRB) light curves and use this algorithm to detect flares in the UV/optical.
The algorithm makes use of the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) to analyze
the residuals of the fitted light curve, removing all major features, and to
determine the statistically best fit to the data by iteratively adding
additional `breaks' to the light curve. These additional breaks represent the
individual components of the detected flares: T_start, T_stop, and T_peak. We
present the detection of 119 unique flaring periods detected by applying this
algorithm to light curves taken from the Second Swift Ultraviolet/Optical
Telescope (UVOT) GRB Afterglow Catalog. We analyzed 201 UVOT GRB light curves
and found episodes of flaring in 68 of the light curves. For those light curves
with flares, we find an average number of ~2 flares per GRB. Flaring is
generally restricted to the first 1000 seconds of the afterglow, but can be
observed and detected beyond 10^5 seconds. More than 80% of the flares detected
are short in duration with Delta t/t of < 0.5. Flares were observed with flux
ratios relative to the underlying light curve of between 0.04 to 55.42. Many of
the strongest flares were also seen at greater than 1000 seconds after the
burst.Comment: Submitted to ApJ. 20 pages (including 8 figures and 1 table
Theoretical Clues to the Ultraviolet Diversity of Type Ia Supernovae
The effect of metallicity on the observed light of Type Ia supernovae (SNe
Ia) could lead to systematic errors as the absolute magnitudes of local and
distant SNe Ia are compared to measure luminosity distances and determine
cosmological parameters. The UV light may be especially sensitive to
metallicity, though different modeling methods disagree as to the magnitude,
wavelength dependence, and even the sign of the effect. The outer density
structure, ^56 Ni, and to a lesser degree asphericity, also impact the UV. We
compute synthetic photometry of various metallicity-dependent models and
compare to UV/optical photometry from the Swift Ultra-Violet/Optical Telescope.
We find that the scatter in the mid-UV to near-UV colors is larger than
predicted by changes in metallicity alone and is not consistent with reddening.
We demonstrate that a recently employed method to determine relative abundances
using UV spectra can be done using UVOT photometry, but we warn that accurate
results require an accurate model of the cause of the variations. The abundance
of UV photometry now available should provide constraints on models that
typically rely on UV spectroscopy for constraining metallicity, density, and
other parameters. Nevertheless, UV spectroscopy for a variety of SN explosions
is still needed to guide the creation of accurate models. A better
understanding of the influences affecting the UV is important for using SNe Ia
as cosmological probes, as the UV light may test whether SNe Ia are
significantly affected by evolutionary effects.Comment: 10 pages. Submitted to Ap
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