Troja, E, Sakamoto, T, Cenko, SB, Lien, A, Gehrels, N, Castro-Tirado, AJ, Ricci, R, Capone, J, Toy, V, Kutyrev, A, Kawai, N, Cucchiara, A, Fruchter, A, Gorosabel, J, Jeong, S, Levan, A, Perley, DA, Sanchez-Ramirez, R, Tanvir, N and Veilleux, S (2016) An Achromatic Break in the Afterglow of the Short GRB 140903A: Evidence for a Narrow Jet. The Astrophysical Journal, 827 (2). ISSN 1538-4357

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Abstract

The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We report the results of our observing campaign on GRB 140903A, a nearby (z = 0.351) short-duration (T90 ∼ 0.3 s) gamma-ray burst discovered by Swift. We monitored the X-ray afterglow with Chandra up to 15 days after the burst and detected a steeper decay of the X-ray flux after tj ≈ 1 day. Continued monitoring at optical and radio wavelengths showed a similar decay in flux at nearly the same time, and we interpret it as evidence of a narrowly collimated jet. By using the standard fireball model to describe the afterglow evolution, we derive a jet opening angle θj ≈ 5° and a collimation-corrected total energy release E ≈ 2 × 1050 erg. We further discuss the nature of the GRB progenitor system. Three main lines disfavor a massive star progenitor: the properties of the prompt gamma-ray emission, the age and low star formation rate of the host galaxy, and the lack of a bright supernova. We conclude that this event likely originated from a compact binary merger. © 2016.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences, 0305 Organic Chemistry, 0306 Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural)
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	American Astronomical Society
Date Deposited:	17 Feb 2017 12:01
Last Modified:	02 Aug 2022 13:56
DOI or ID number:	10.3847/0004-637X/827/2/102
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/5581

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