Are Durations of Weak Gamma-Ray Bursts Reliable?
Astrophysics
2010-11-11 v1
Abstract
Simulations in the GUSBAD Catalog of gamma-ray bursts suggest that the apparent duration of a burst decreases as its amplitude is decreased. We see no evidence for this effect in the BATSE catalog. We show that for a burst at the detection limit, the typical signal-to-noise ratio at the edges of the T90 duration is around 1.5, suggesting that T90 must be quite uncertain. The situation for T50 is less unfavorable. Simulations using the exact procedure to derive the durations in the BATSE catalog would be useful in quantifying the effect.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0508356,
title = {Are Durations of Weak Gamma-Ray Bursts Reliable?},
author = {Maarten Schmidt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0508356},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures; paper presented at the "4th Workshop on Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Afterglow Era", Rome, Oct 2004. To be published in Il Nuovo Cimento