Cosmological Implications of the Very High Redshift GRB 050904
Abstract
We report near simultaneous multi-color (RIYJHK) observations made with the MAGNUM 2m telescope of the gamma ray burst GRB 050904 detected by the SWIFT satellite. The spectral energy distribution shows a very large break between the I and J bands. Using intergalactic transmissions measured from high redshift quasars we show that the observations place a 95% confidence lower limit of z=6.18 on the object, consistent with a later measured spectroscopic redshift of 6.29 obtained by Kawai et al. (2005) with the Subaru telescope. We show that the break strength in the R and I bands is consistent with that measured in the quasars. Finally we consider the implications for the star formation history at high redshift.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0509697,
title = {Cosmological Implications of the Very High Redshift GRB 050904},
author = {P. A. Price and L. L. Cowie and T. Minezaki and B. P. Schmidt and A. Songaila and Y. Yoshii},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0509697},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Expanded introduction and discussion