Gamma-ray Bursts as Distance Indicators by a Statistical Learning Approach
Abstract
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be probes of the early universe, but currently, only 26% of GRBs observed by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory GRBs have known redshifts () due to observational limitations. To address this, we estimated the GRB redshift (distance) via a supervised statistical learning model that uses optical afterglow observed by Swift and ground-based telescopes. The inferred redshifts are strongly correlated (a Pearson coefficient of 0.93) with the observed redshifts, thus proving the reliability of this method. The inferred and observed redshifts allow us to estimate the number of GRBs occurring at a given redshift (GRB rate) to be 8.47-9 for . Since GRBs come from the collapse of massive stars, we compared this rate with the star formation rate highlighting a discrepancy of a factor of 3 at .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2402.04551,
title = {Gamma-ray Bursts as Distance Indicators by a Statistical Learning Approach},
author = {Maria Giovanna Dainotti and Aditya Narendra and Agnieszka Pollo and Vahe Petrosian and Malgorzata Bogdan and Kazunari Iwasaki and Jason Xavier Prochaska and Enrico Rinaldi and David Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.04551},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
10 figures. Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1907.05074