English

Detectability of GRB optical afterglows with Gaia satellite

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-05-28 v2

Abstract

With the launch of Gaia satellite, detection of many different types of transient sources will be possible, one of them being optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Using the knowledge of the satellites dynamics and properties of GRB optical afterglows we performed a simulation in order to estimate an average GRB detection rate with Gaia. Here we present the simulation results for two types of GRB optical afterglows, differing in the observer's line-of-sight compared to a GRB jet axis: regular (on-axis) and orphan afterglows. Results show that for on-axis GRBs, less than 10 detections in five years of foreseen Gaia operational time are expected. The orphan afterglows simulation results are more promising, giving a more optimistic number of several tens of detections in five years.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1107.2858,
  title  = {Detectability of GRB optical afterglows with Gaia satellite},
  author = {J. Japelj and A. Gomboc},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.2858},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages, 10 figures, accepted to PASP