Engineering topics

Binbin, Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Binbin, Zhang.

12 records

DOE OSTI2012

THE EXTREMELY HIGH PEAK ENERGY OF GRB 110721A IN THE CONTEXT OF A DISSIPATIVE PHOTOSPHERE SYNCHROTRON EMISSION MODEL

The Fermi observations of GRB 110721A have revealed an unusually high peak energy {approx}15 MeV in the first time bin of the prompt emission. We find that an interpretation is unlikely in terms of internal shock models, and confirm that a standard blackbody photospheric model also falls short. On the other hand, we show that dissipative photospheric synchrotron models ranging from extreme magnetically dominated to baryon dominated dynamics are able to accommodate such high peak values.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2012

A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF FERMI GAMMA-RAY BURST DATA. II. E{sub p} EVOLUTION PATTERNS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE OBSERVED SPECTRUM-LUMINOSITY RELATIONS

We present a time-resolved spectral analysis of 51 long and 11 short bright gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed with the Fermi/Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor, paying special attention to E{sub p} evolution within each burst. Among eight single-pulse long GRBs, five show an evolution from hard to soft, while three show intensity tracking. The multi-pulse long GRBs have more complicated patterns. Statistically, the hard-to-soft evolution pulses tend to be more asymmetric than the intensity-tracking ones, with a steeper rising wing than the falling wing. Short GRBs have E{sub p} tracking intensity exclusively with the 16 ms time-resolution analysis. We performed a simulation analysis and suggest that for at least some bursts, the late intensity-tracking pulses could be a consequence of overlapping hard-to-soft pulses. However, the fact that the intensity-tracking pattern exists in the first pulse of the multi-pulse long GRBs and some single-pulse GRBs, suggests that intensity tracking is an independent component, which may operate in some late pulses as well. For the GRBs with measured redshifts, we present a time-resolved E{sub p} - L{sub {gamma},iso} correlation analysis and show that the scatter of the correlation is comparable to that of the global Amati/Yonetoku relation. We discuss the predictions of various radiation models regarding E{sub p} evolution, as well as the possibility of a precessing jet in GRBs. The data pose a great challenge to each of these models, and hold the key to unveiling the physics behind GRB prompt emission.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

GRB 120422A: A LOW-LUMINOSITY GAMMA-RAY BURST DRIVEN BY A CENTRAL ENGINE

GRB 120422A is a low-luminosity gamma-ray burst (GRB) associated with a bright supernova, which distinguishes itself by its relatively short T{sub 90} ({approx}5 s) and an energetic and steep-decaying X-ray tail. We analyze the Swift Burst Alert Telescope and X-ray Telescope data and discuss the physical implications. We show that the steep decline early in the X-ray light curve can be interpreted as the curvature tail of a late emission episode around 58-86 s, with a curved instantaneous spectrum at the end of the emission episode. Together with the main activity in the first {approx}20 s and the weak emission from 40 s to 60 s, the prompt emission is variable, which points to a central engine origin in contrast to a shock-breakout origin, which is used to interpret some other nearby low-luminosity supernova GRBs. Both the curvature effect model and interpreting the early shallow decay as the coasting external forward shock emission in a wind medium provide a constraint on the bulk Lorentz factor {Gamma} to be around several. Comparing the properties of GRB 120422A and other supernova GRBs, we find that the main criterion to distinguish engine-driven GRBs from shock-breakout GRBs is the time-averaged {gamma}-ray luminosity. Engine-driven GRBs likely have a luminosity above {approx}10{sup 48} erg s{sup -1}.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

GRB 110709A, 111117A, AND 120107A: FAINT HIGH-ENERGY GAMMA-RAY PHOTON EMISSION FROM FERMI-LAT OBSERVATIONS AND DEMOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS

Launched on 2008 June 11, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has provided a rare opportunity to study high-energy photon emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Although the majority of such events (27) have been identified by the Fermi-LAT Collaboration, four were uncovered by using more sensitive statistical techniques. In this paper, we continue our earlier work by finding three more GRBs associated with high-energy photon emission, GRB 110709A, 111117A, and 120107A. To systematize our matched filter approach, a pipeline has been developed to identify these objects in nearly real time. GRB 120107A is the first product of this analysis procedure. Despite the reduced threshold for identification, the number of GRB events has not increased significantly. This relative dearth of events with low photon number prompted a study of the apparent photon number distribution. We find an extremely good fit to a simple power law with an exponent of -1.8 {+-} 0.3 for the differential distribution. As might be expected, there is a substantial correlation between the number of lower energy photons detected by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and the number observed by LAT. Thus, high-energy photon emission is associated with some but not all of the brighter GBM events. Deeper studies of the properties of the small population of high-energy emitting bursts may eventually yield a better understanding of these entire phenomena.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

ORIGIN OF THE GeV EMISSION DURING THE X-RAY FLARING ACTIVITY IN GRB 100728A

Recently, Fermi-LAT detected GeV emission during the X-ray flaring activity in GRB 100728A. We study various scenarios for its origin. The hard spectrum of the GeV emission favors the external inverse Compton (EIC) origin in which X-ray flare photons are up-scattered by relativistic electrons in the external forward shock. This EIC scenario, with anisotropic scattering effect taken into account, can reproduce the temporal and spectral properties of the GeV emission in GRB 100728A.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

UNUSUAL CENTRAL ENGINE ACTIVITY IN THE DOUBLE BURST GRB 110709B

The double burst, GRB 110709B, triggered the Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) twice at 21:32:39 UT and 21:43:45 UT, respectively, on 2011 July 9. This is the first time we observed a gamma-ray burst (GRB) with two BAT triggers. In this paper, we present simultaneous Swift and Konus-WIND observations of this unusual GRB and its afterglow. If the two events originated from the same physical progenitor, their different time-dependent spectral evolution suggests they must belong to different episodes of the central engine, which may be a magnetar-to-BH accretion system.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

STEPWISE FILTER CORRELATION METHOD AND EVIDENCE OF SUPERPOSED VARIABILITY COMPONENTS IN GAMMA-RAY BURST PROMPT EMISSION LIGHT CURVES

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have variable light curves. Although most models attribute the observed variability to one physical origin (e.g., central engine activity, clumpy circumburst medium, or relativistic turbulence), some models invoke two physically distinct variability components. We develop a method, namely, the stepwise filter correlation method, to decompose the variability components in a GRB light curve. Based on a low-pass filter technique, we progressively filter the high-frequency signals from the light curve, and then perform a correlation analysis between each adjunct pair of filtered light curves. Our simulations suggest that if a mock light curve contains a 'slow' variability component superposed on a rapidly varying time sequence, the correlation coefficient as a function of the filter frequency would display a prominent 'dip' feature around the frequency of the slow component. Through simulations, we demonstrate that this method can identify significant clustering structures of a light curve in the frequency domain, and we prove that it can catch superposed signals that are otherwise not easy to retrieve based on other methods (e.g., the power density spectrum analysis method). We apply this method to 266 Burst and Transient Source Experiment bright GRBs. We find that the majority of the bursts have clear evidence of such a superposition effect. We perform a statistical analysis of the identified variability components and discuss the implications for GRB physics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

FAINT HIGH-ENERGY GAMMA-RAY PHOTON EMISSION OF GRB 081006A FROM FERMI OBSERVATIONS

Since the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on 2008 June 11, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument has firmly detected more than 20 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with high-energy photon emission above 100 MeV. Using the matched filter technique, three more GRBs have also shown evidence of correlation with high-energy photon emission as demonstrated by Akerlof et al. In this paper, we present another GRB, GRB 081006A, unambiguously detected by the matched filter technique. This event is associated with more than 13 high-energy photons above 100 MeV. The likelihood analysis code provided by the Fermi Science Support Center generated an independent verification of this detection using a comparison of the test statistics value with similar calculations for random LAT data fields. We have performed detailed temporal and spectral analysis of photons from 8 keV up to 0.8 GeV from the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor and the LAT. The properties of GRB 081006A can be compared to those of the other two long-duration GRBs detected at similar significance, GRB 080825C and GRB 090217A. We find that GRB 081006A is more similar to GRB 080825C with comparable appearances of late high-energy photon emission. As demonstrated previously, there appears to be a surprising dearth of faint LAT GRBs, with only one additional GRB identified in a sample of 74. In this unique period when both Swift and Fermi are operational, there is some urgency to explore this aspect of GRBs as fully as possible.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Atomic-ensemble-based quantum repeater against general polarization and phase noise

We present a quantum repeater architecture based on atomic ensembles, which is free of polarization and phase noise. With only simple optical elements, we can obtain the uncorrupted entanglement in the noisy channel. Even if the channel suffers from the general polarization and phase noise, the fidelity of transmitted qubits in our protocol can be stable and have no dependence on the noise parameter, which is a significant advantage compared with previous protocols. Moveover, we can even improve the fidelity by using time delayers. The proposed quantum repeater is feasible and useful in the long-distance quantum entanglement distribution and may be promising in other quantum-information applications.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2011

A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF FERMI GAMMA-RAY BURST DATA. I. SPECTRAL COMPONENTS AND THE POSSIBLE PHYSICAL ORIGINS OF LAT/GBM GRBs

We present a systematic analysis of the spectral and temporal properties of 17 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) codetected by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the Fermi satellite in 2010 May. We performed a time-resolved spectral analysis of all the bursts, with the finest temporal resolution allowed by statistics, to reduce temporal smearing of different spectral components. We found that the time-resolved spectra of 14 out of 17 GRBs are best modeled with the classical 'Band' function over the entire Fermi spectral range, which may suggest a common origin for emissions detected by the LAT and GBM. GRB 090902B and GRB 090510 require the superposition of an MeV component and an extra power-law component, with the former having a sharp cutoff above E{sub p} . For GRB 090902B, this MeV component becomes progressively narrower as the time bin gets smaller, and can be fit with a Planck function as the time bin becomes small enough. In general, we speculate that, phenomenologically, there may be three elemental spectral components that shape the time-resolved GRB spectra: a Band-function component (e.g., in GRB 080916C) that extends over a wide energy range and does not narrow with decreasing time bins, which may be of non-thermal origin; a quasi-thermal component (e.g., in GRB 090902B), with spectra progressively narrowing with reducing time bins; and another non-thermal power-law component extending to high energies. The spectra of different bursts may be decomposed into one or more of these elemental components. We compare this sample with the Burst and Transient Source Experiment sample and investigate some correlations among spectral parameters. We discuss the physical implications of the data analysis results for GRB prompt emission, including jet composition (matter-dominated versus Poynting-flux-dominated outflow), emission sites (internal shock, external shock, or photosphere), as well as radiation mechanisms (synchrotron, synchrotron self-Compton, or thermal Compton upscattering).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2010

A NEW CLASSIFICATION METHOD FOR GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

Recent Swift observations suggest that the traditional long versus short gamma-ray burst (GRB) classification scheme does not always associate GRBs to the two physically motivated model types, i.e., Type II (massive star origin) versus Type I (compact star origin). We propose a new phenomenological classification method of GRBs by introducing a new parameter {epsilon} = E{sub {gamma},iso,52}/E {sup 5/3}{sub p,z,2}, where E{sub {gamma},iso} is the isotropic gamma-ray energy (in units of 10{sup 52} erg) and E{sub p,z} is the cosmic rest-frame spectral peak energy (in units of 100 keV). For those short GRBs with 'extended emission', both quantities are defined for the short/hard spike only. With the current complete sample of GRBs with redshift and E{sub p} measurements, the {epsilon} parameter shows a clear bimodal distribution with a separation at {epsilon} {approx} 0.03. The high-{epsilon} region encloses the typical long GRBs with high luminosity, some high-z 'rest-frame-short' GRBs (such as GRB 090423 and GRB 080913), as well as some high-z short GRBs (such as GRB 090426). All these GRBs have been claimed to be of Type II origin based on other observational properties in the literature. All the GRBs that are argued to be of Type I origin are found to be clustered in the low-{epsilon} region. They can be separated from some nearby low-luminosity long GRBs (in 3{sigma}) by an additional T{sub 90} criterion, i.e., T{sub 90,z} {approx}< 5 s in the Swift/BAT band. We suggest that this new classification scheme can better match the physically motivated Type II/I classification scheme.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2010

CONSTRAINING GAMMA-RAY BURST INITIAL LORENTZ FACTOR WITH THE AFTERGLOW ONSET FEATURE AND DISCOVERY OF A TIGHT {Gamma}{sub 0}-E{sub {gamma},iso} CORRELATION

The onset of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow is characterized by a smooth bump in the early afterglow light curve as the GRB fireball is decelerated by the circumburst medium. We extensively search for GRBs with such an onset feature in their optical and X-ray light curves from the literature and from the catalog established with the Swift/XRT. Twenty optically selected GRBs and 12 X-ray-selected GRBs are obtained, among which 17 optically selected and 2 X-ray-selected GRBs have redshift measurements. We fit these light curves with a smooth broken power law and measure the width (w), rising timescale (t{sub r}), and decaying timescale (t{sub d}) at full width at half-maximum. Strong mutual correlations among these timescales and with the peak time (t{sub p}) are found. The ratio t{sub r}/t{sub d} is almost universal among bursts, but the ratio t{sub r}/t{sub p} varies from 0.3 to {approx}1. The optical peak luminosity in the R band (L{sub R,p}) is anti-correlated with t{sub p} and w in the burst frame, indicating a dimmer and broader bump peaking at a later time. The isotropic prompt gamma-ray energy (E{sub {gamma},iso}) is also tightly correlated with L{sub R,p} and t{sub p} in the burst frame. Assuming that the bumps signal the deceleration of the GRB fireballs in a constant density medium, we calculate the initial Lorentz factor ({Gamma}{sub 0}) and the deceleration radius (R{sub d}) of the GRBs with redshift measurements. The derived {Gamma}{sub 0} is typically a few hundreds, and the deceleration radius is R{sub dec} {approx} 2 x 10{sup 17} cm. More intriguingly, a tight correlation between {Gamma}{sub 0} and E{sub {gamma},iso} is found, namely {Gamma}{sub 0} {approx_equal} 182(E{sub {gamma},iso}/10{sup 52} erg){sup 0.25}. This correlation also applies to the small sample of GRBs which show the signature of the afterglow onset in their X-ray afterglow, and to two bursts (GRBs 990123 and 080319B) whose early optical emission is dominated by a reverse shock. The lower limits of {Gamma}{sub 0} derived from a sample of optical afterglow light curves showing a decaying feature from the beginning of the observation are also generally consistent with such a correlation. The tight lower limits of {Gamma}{sub 0} of GRBs 080916C and 090902B derived from the opacity constraints with Fermi/LAT observations are also consistent with the correlation at the 2{sigma} confidence level, but the short GRB 090510 is a clear outlier of this relation. This correlation may give insight to GRB physics and could serve as an indicator of {Gamma}{sub 0} for long GRBs without early afterglow detections. A comparison of the early X-ray and optical afterglow light curves shows that the early bright X-ray emission is usually dominated by a non-forward-shock component, but occasionally (for one case) the forward shock emission is observable, and an achromatic deceleration feature is observed. The superposition of the internal and external components in X-rays causes the diversity of the observed X-ray light curves.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗