Abstract

Double neutron star (DNS) merger events are promising candidates of short gamma-ray burst (sGRB) progenitors as well as high-frequency gravitational wave (GW) emitters. On August 17, 2017, such a coinciding event was detected by both the LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave detector network as GW170817 and Gamma-Ray Monitor on board NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope as GRB 170817A. Here, we show that the fluence and spectral peak energy of this sGRB fall into the lower portion of the distributions of known sGRBs. Its peak isotropic luminosity is abnormally low. The estimated event rate density above this luminosity is at least \[190_{ - 160}^{ + 440}\] Gpc−3 yr−1, which is close to but still below the DNS merger event rate density. This event likely originates from a structured jet viewed from a large viewing angle. There are similar faint soft GRBs in the Fermi archival data, a small fraction of which might belong to this new population of nearby, low-luminosity sGRBs.

Details

Title
A peculiar low-luminosity short gamma-ray burst from a double neutron star merger progenitor
Author
B-B, Zhang 1 ; Zhang, B 2 ; Sun, H 3 ; W-H, Lei 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Gao, H 5 ; Y Li 6 ; Shao, L 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Zhao, Y 8 ; Y-D, Hu 9 ; H-J Lü 10 ; Wu, X-F 11 ; Fan, X-L 12 ; Wang, G 13 ; Castro-Tirado, A J 14 ; Zhang, S 15 ; B-Y, Yu 15 ; Y-Y, Cao 15 ; E-W, Liang 10 

 School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China; Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Granada, Spain; Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nanjing University, Ministry of Education, Nanjing, China 
 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA; Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China; Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing, China 
 National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 
 School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China 
 Department of Astronomy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China 
 Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing, China 
 Department of Space Sciences and Astronomy, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, China; Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China 
 Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA 
 Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Granada, Spain; Facultad de Ciencias, Campus Fuentenueva s/n, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain 
10  Guangxi Key Laboratory for Relativistic Astrophysics, Department of Physics, Guangxi University, Nanning, China 
11  Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China; School of Astronomy and Space Science, , University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China 
12  School of Physics and Electronics Information, Hubei University of Education, Wuhan, China 
13  Gran Sasso Science Institute (INFN), LAquila, Italy; INFN - Sezione di Pisa Edificio C, Pisa, Italy 
14  Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Granada, Spain; Departamento de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, Escuela de Ingenierías, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain 
15  Department of Space Sciences and Astronomy, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, China 
Pages
1-6
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Jan 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1992990690
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.