Monday, December 19, 2011

1110.0734 (B. Gendre et al.)

GRB 110205A: Anatomy of a long gamma-ray burst    [PDF]

B. Gendre, J. L. Atteia, M. Boër, F. Colas, A. Klotz, F. Kugel, M. Laas-Bourez, C. Rinner, J. Strajnic, G. Stratta, F. Vachier
The Swift burst GRB 110205A was a very bright burst visible in the Northern hemisphere. GRB 110205A was intrinsically long and very energetic and it occurred in a low-density interstellar medium environment, leading to delayed afterglow emission and a clear temporal separation of the main emitting components: prompt emission, reverse shock, and forward shock. Our observations show several remarkable features of GRB 110205A : the detection of prompt optical emission strongly correlated with the BAT light curve, with no temporal lag between the two ; the absence of correlation of the X-ray emission compared to the optical and high energy gamma-ray ones during the prompt phase ; and a large optical re-brightening after the end of the prompt phase, that we interpret as a signature of the reverse shock. Beyond the pedagogical value offered by the excellent multi-wavelength coverage of a GRB with temporally separated radiating components, we discuss several questions raised by our observations: the nature of the prompt optical emission and the spectral evolution of the prompt emission at high-energies (from 0.5 keV to 150 keV) ; the origin of an X-ray flare at the beginning of the forward shock; and the modeling of the afterglow, including the reverse shock, in the framework of the classical fireball model.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.0734

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