RAPTOR observations of delayed explosive activity in the high-redshift gamma-ray burst GRB 060206
Abstract
The RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) system at Los Alamos National Laboratory observed GRB 060206 starting 48.1 minutes after gamma-ray emission triggered the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on-board the Swift satellite. The afterglow light curve measured by RAPTOR shows a spectacular re-brightening by ~1 mag about 1 h after the trigger and peaks at R ~ 16.4 mag. Shortly after the onset of the explosive re-brightening the OT doubled its flux on a time-scale of about 4 minutes. The total R-band fluence received from GRB 060206 during this episode is 2.3e-9 erg/cm2. In the rest frame of the burst (z = 4.045) this yields an isotropic equivalent energy release of ~0.7e50 erg in just a narrow UV band 130 +/- 22 nm. We discuss the implications of RAPTOR observations for untriggered searches for fast optical transients and studies of GRB environments at high redshift.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0602403,
title = {RAPTOR observations of delayed explosive activity in the high-redshift gamma-ray burst GRB 060206},
author = {P. R. Wozniak and W. T. Vestrand and J. A. Wren and R. R. White and S. M. Evans and D. Casperson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0602403},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Submitted to ApJ Letters