GRB 221009A has been referred to as the Brightest Of All Time (the BOAT). We investigate the veracity of this statement by comparing it with a half century of prompt gamma-ray burst observations. This burst is the brightest ever detected by the measures of peak flux and fluence. Unexpectedly, GRB 221009A has the highest isotropic-equivalent total energy ever identified, while the peak luminosity is at the ∼99th percentile of the known distribution. We explore how such a burst can be powered and discuss potential implications for ultra-long and high-redshift gamma-ray bursts. By geometric extrapolation of the total fluence and peak flux distributions GRB 221009A appears to be a once in 10,000 year event. Thus, while it almost certainly not the BOAT over all of cosmic history, it may be the brightest gamma-ray burst since human civilization began.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2302.14037,
title = {GRB 221009A, The BOAT},
author = {Eric Burns and Dmitry Svinkin and Edward Fenimore and D. Alexander Kann and José Feliciano Agüí Fernández and Dmitry Frederiks and Rachel Hamburg and Stephen Lesage and Yuri Temiraev and Anastasia Tsvetkova and Elisabetta Bissaldi and Michael S. Briggs and Cori Fletcher and Adam Goldstein and C. Michelle Hui and Boyan A. Hristov and Daniel Kocevski and Alexandra L. Lysenko and Bagrat Mailyan and Judith Racusin and Anna Ridnaia and Oliver J. Roberts and Mikhail Ulanov and Peter Veres and Colleen A. Wilson-Hodge and Joshua Wood},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.14037},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Version accepted to ApJL. Also adds proper acknowledgements