Cucchiara, A, Veres, P, Corsi, A, Cenko, SB, Perley, DA, Lien, A, Marshall, FE, Pagani, C, Toy, VL, Capone, JI, Frail, DA, Horesh, A, Modjaz, M, Butler, NR, Littlejohns, OM, Watson, AM, Kutyrev, AS, Lee, WH, Richer, MG, Klein, CR , Fox, OD, Prochaska, JX, Bloom, JS, Troja, E, Ramirez-Ruiz, E, De Diego, JA, Georgiev, L, González, J, Román-Zñiga, CG, Gehrels, N and Moseley, H (2015) Happy birthday swift: Ultra-long GRB 141121A and its broadband afterglow. The Astrophysical Journal, 812 (2). ISSN 1538-4357
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Abstract
We present our extensive observational campaign on the Swift-discovered GRB 141121A, almost 10 years after its launch. Our observations cover radio through X-rays and extend for more than 30 days after discovery. The prompt phase of GRB 141121A lasted 1410 s and, at the derived redshift of z = 1.469, the isotropic energy is Eγ,iso = 8.0 1052 erg. Due to the long prompt duration, GRB 141121A falls into the recently discovered class of ultra-long GRBs (UL-GRBs). Peculiar features of this burst are (1) a flat early-time optical light curve and (2) a radio-to-X-ray rebrightening around three days after the burst. The latter is followed by a steep optical-to-X-ray decay and a much shallower radio fading. We analyze GRB 141121A in the context of the standard forward-reverse shock (FS, RS) scenario and we disentangle the FS and RS contributions. Finally, we comment on the puzzling early-time (t ≲ 3 days) behavior of GRB 141121A, and suggest that its interpretation may require a two-component jet model. Overall, our analysis confirms that the class of UL-GRBs represents our best opportunity to firmly establish the prominent emission mechanisms in action during powerful gamma-ray burst explosions, and future missions (like SVOM, XTiDE, or ISS-Lobster) will provide many more of such objects.
© 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | 0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences, 0305 Organic Chemistry, 0306 Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural) |
Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics Q Science > QD Chemistry |
Divisions: | Astrophysics Research Institute |
Publisher: | American Astronomical Society |
Date Deposited: | 21 Feb 2017 09:34 |
Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2021 11:54 |
DOI or ID number: | 10.1088/0004-637X/812/2/122 |
URI: | https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/5616 |
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