A&A 395, L41-L45 (2002)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20021501

Letter

The X-ray afterglow of GRB 020322

D. Watson¹, J. N. Reeves¹, J. P. Osborne¹, J. A. Tedds¹, P. T. O'Brien¹, L. Tomas² and M. Ehle<sup>2

1</sup>  X-ray Astronomy Group, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
²  XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre, European Space Agency, PO Box 50727, 28080 Madrid, Spain

(Received 27 September 2002 / Accepted 14 October 2002)

Abstract
The spectrum of the afterglow of GRB 020322 is the highest-quality X-ray spectrum of a GRB afterglow available to date. It was detected by XMM-Newton in an observation starting fifteen hours after the GRB with a mean 0.2-10.0 keV observed flux of erg cm ^-2 s ^-1, making it the brightest X-ray afterglow observed so far with XMM-Newton. The source faded; its lightcurve was well fit by a power-law with a decay index of . The spectrum is adequately fit with a power-law absorbed with neutral or ionised gas significantly in excess of the foreground Galactic column, at redshift 1.8_-1.1^+1.0 or with low metal abundances. No spectral line or edge features are detected at high significance, in particular, a thermal emission model fits the data poorly, the upper limit on its contribution to the spectrum is erg cm ^-2 s ^-1, or ~10% of the total flux. No spectral variability is observed.

Key words: gamma rays: bursts -- X-rays: general

Offprint request: D. Watson, wat@star.le.ac.uk

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