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Published July 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

Unveiling the Origin of Grb 090709A: Lack of Periodicity in a Reddened Cosmological Long-Duration Gamma-Ray Burst

Abstract

We present broadband (gamma-ray, X-ray, near-infrared, optical, and radio) observations of the Swift gamma-ray burst (GRB) 090709A and its afterglow in an effort to ascertain the origin of this high-energy transient. Previous analyses suggested that GRB 090709A exhibited quasi-periodic oscillations with a period of 8.06 s, a trait unknown in long-duration GRBs but typical of flares from soft gamma-ray repeaters. When properly accounting for the underlying shape of the power-density spectrum of GRB 090709A, we find no conclusive (>3σ) evidence for the reported periodicity. In conjunction with the location of the transient (far from the Galactic plane and absent any nearby host galaxy in the local universe) and the evidence for extinction in excess of the Galactic value, we consider a magnetar origin relatively unlikely. A long-duration GRB, however, can account for the majority of the observed properties of this source. GRB 090709A is distinguished from other long-duration GRBs primarily by the large amount of obscuration from its host galaxy (A_(K,obs) ≳ 2 mag).

Additional Information

© 2010 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2009 November 16; accepted 2010 May 13; published 2010 June 10. We thank Eliot Quataert and Tony Piro for valuable discussions, Cullen Blake and Bethany Cobb for their assistance in automating and operating the PAIRITEL telescope, C. A´ lvarez for his help with the GTC observations, G. Bergond for his support during the 3.5 m CAHA observations, Mansi Kasliwal and Fiona Harrison for assistance in operating P60, and Andy Boden for acquiring the Keck/LGS data. S.B.C. and A.V.F. are grateful for generous support from Gary and Cynthia Bengier, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, NASA/Swift Guest Investigator grant NNX09AL08G, and National Science Foundation (NSF) grant AST0908886. A.N.M. acknowledges support from an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The research of J.G. and A.J.C.-T. is supported by the Spanish programs ESP2005-07714-C03-03, AYA2004-01515, AYA2007- 67627-C03-03, AYA2008-03467/ESP, and AYA2009-14000- C03-01. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02- 05CH11231, provided staff, computational resources and data storage for this project. P.E.N., A.V.F., and J.S.B. acknowledge support from the US Department of Energy Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing program under contract DE-FG02-06ER06-04. P60 operations are funded in part by NASA through the Swift Guest Investigator Program (grant no. NNG06GH61G). This publication has made use of data obtained from the Swift interface of the High-Energy Astrophysics Archive (HEASARC), provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. PAIRITEL is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) and was made possible by a grant from the Harvard University Milton Fund, a camera loan from the University of Virginia, and continued support of the SAO and UC Berkeley. The PAIRITEL project and those working on PAIRITEL data are further supported by NASA/Swift Guest Investigator grants NNG06GH50G and NNX08AN84G. Based on observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), installed in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, in the island of La Palma. Based in part on observations collected at the Centro Astron´omico Hispano Alem´an (CAHA) at Calar Alto, operated jointly by the Max-Planck Institut f¨ur Astronomie and the Instituto de Astrof´ısica de Andaluc´ıa (CSIC). We thank Calar Alto Observatory for allocation of Director's Discretionary Time. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA; the Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community; we are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. Facilities: Swift (BAT; XRT), FLWO:1.2m (PAIRITEL), PO:1.2m (QUEST), PO:1.5m, CAO:3.5m (OMEGA2000), GTC (OSIRIS), Keck:II (NIRC2/LGS), VLA

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August 23, 2023
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