Issue |
A&A
Volume 379, Number 3, December I 2001
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | L39 - L43 | |
Section | Letters | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20011485 | |
Published online | 15 December 2001 |
Possible detection of hard X-ray afterglows of short γ-ray bursts
1
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, CB3 0HA Cambridge, UK e-mail: enrico@ast.cam.ac.uk
2
Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Bianchi 46, 23807 Merate, Italy e-mail: gabriele@merate.mi.astro.it
Corresponding author: D. Lazzati, lazzati@ast.cam.ac.uk
Received:
31
August
2001
Accepted:
10
October
2001
We report the discovery of a transient and fading hard X-ray emission in the BATSE lightcurves of a sample of short γ-ray bursts. We have summed each of the four channel BATSE light curves of 76 short bursts to uncover the average overall temporal and spectral evolution of a possible transient signal following the prompt flux. We found an excess emission peaking ~30 s after the prompt one, detectable for ≈ 100 s. The soft power-law spectrum and the time-evolution of this transient signal suggest that it is produced by the deceleration of a relativistic expanding source, as predicted by the afterglow model.
Key words: gamma rays: bursts / radiation mechanisms: non-thermal
© ESO, 2001
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.