GRB 100614A and GRB 100615A: two extremely dark gamma-ray bursts

¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via Frascati 33, 00040 Monteporzio Catone, Italy
e-mail: delia@mporzio.astro.it
² ASI-Science Data Center, via Galileo Galilei, 00044 Frascati, Italy

Received: 12 January 2011
Accepted: 3 June 2011

Abstract

Context. Dark gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are sources with no or faint optical/near infrared (NIR) afterglow with respect to the X-ray one. Three possible explanations of this optical darkness have been proposed, namely: i) the GRB might be at high redshift, such that the Lyman α absorption prevents optical identifications; ii) dust in the GRB host galaxy may absorb the optical/NIR wavelengths; and iii) the optical faintness might have an intrinsic origin.

Aims. We study two dark GRBs discovered by Swift, namely, GRB 100614A and GRB 100615A. These sources are bright in the X-rays, but no optical/NIR afterglow has been detected for either source, despite the efforts of several follow-up campaigns that have been performed since soon after the GRB explosion.

Methods. We analyze the X-ray data and collect all the optical/NIR upper limits in literature for these bursts. We then build optical-to-X-ray spectral energy distributions (SEDs) at the times at which the reddest upper limits are available, and we model our SEDs with the attenuation curves of the Milky Way (MW), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and one obtained for a sample of starburst galaxies.

Results. We find that to explain the deepest NIR upper limits assuming either a MW or SMC extinction law, the visual extinction towards GRB 100614A is A_V > 47 mag, while for GRB 100615A we obtain A_V > 58 mag using data taken within one day after the burst and A_V > 22 mag even 9.2 days after the trigger.

Conclusions. If these bursts were strongly extincted by dust, these results imply that a MW or SMC-like dust obscuration is unlikely to be able to explain their optical darkness. Since both GRBs are bright in X-rays, explanation iii) also cannot explain their dark classification, unless optical radiation and X-rays are not part of the same synchrotron spectrum. In particular, the X-ray emission during the first 100 − 10   000 s after the burst, shows in  ~70% of the cases a “shallow phase” unexpected by the fireball model, typically not tracked at optical wavelengths, that could mimic a stronger optical dust extinction than the real one. An alternative, or complementary explanation of the previous possibility, involves greyer extinction laws. A starburst attenuation curve gives A_V > 11 (A_V > 15) for GRB 100614A (GRB 100615A) before 1 day after the burst, which is less extreme, despite still very high. Assuming high redshift in addition to extinction, implies that A_V > 10 at z = 2 and A_V > 4−5 at z = 5, regardless of the adopted extinction recipe. These lower limits are well above the A_V computed for previous GRBs at known redshift, but not unlikely. A different, exotic possibility would be an extremely high redshift origin (z > 17 given the missing K detections). Population III stars are expected to emerge at z ~ 20 and can produce GRBs with energies well above those inferred for our GRBs at these redshifts. However, high N_H values (above the Galactic ones) toward our GRBs challenge this scenario. Mid- and far-IR late afterglow (>10⁵ s after trigger) observations of these extreme class of GRBs can help us to differentiate between the proposed scenarios.