Search

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are energetic phenomena that have significant implications for understanding fundamental physics and the universe. Recent observations of FRB 121102, FRB 20220912A, and FRB 20201124A by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) showed high burst rates and distinctive energy distribution and temporal properties. In this study, we examine these observations to investigate the scale invariance of the waiting times between bursts for intervals longer than approximately 1 second. Our analysis revealed a unified scaling law for these longer intervals, which is similar to the behavior of solar flares. This discovery inspires us to suggest a dual analogy of the FRB scenario across the entire time intervals: with earthquake dynamics at subsecond scales and with solar flare dynamics beyond the one-second threshold. This threshold potentially aligns with the dynamic time scale of neutron star crusts, offering insight of the occurrence of FRBs into the internal processes of neutron stars.

GRB 221009A is the brightest gamma-ray burst ever detected since the discovery of this kind of energetic explosions. However, an accurate measurement of the prompt emission properties of this burst is very challenging due to its exceptional brightness. With joint observations of \textit{Insight}-HXMT and GECAM-C, we made an unprecedentedly accurate measurement of the emission during the first $\sim$1800 s of GRB 221009A, including its precursor, main emission (ME, which dominates the burst in flux), flaring emission and early afterglow, in the hard X-ray to soft gamma-ray band from $\sim$ 10 keV to $\sim$ 6 MeV. Based on the GECAM-C unsaturated data of the ME, we measure a record-breaking isotropic equivalent energy ($E_{\rm iso}$) of $\bf \sim 1.5 \times 10^{55}$ erg, which is about eight times the total rest-mass energy of the Sun. The early afterglow data require a significant jet break between 650 s and 1100 s, most likely at $\sim950$ s from the afterglow starting time $T_{AG}$, which corresponds to a jet opening angle of $\sim {0.7^\circ} \ (\eta_\gamma n)^{1/8}$, where $n$ is the ambient medium density in units of $\rm cm^{-3}$ and $\eta_\gamma$ is the ratio between $\gamma$-ray energy and afterglow kinetic energy. The beaming-corrected total $\gamma$-ray energy $E_{\gamma}$ is $\sim 1.15 \times10^{51} \ (\eta_\gamma n)^{1/4}$ erg, which is typical for long GRBs. These results suggest that this GRB may have a special central engine, which could launch and collimate a very narrowly beamed jet with an ordinary energy budget, leading to exceptionally luminous gamma-ray radiation per unit solid angle. Alternatively, more GRBs might have such a narrow and bright beam, which are missed by an unfavorable viewing angle or have been detected without distance measurement., Comment: Submitted to National Science Review. This paper is under press embargo, contact the corresponding author for details

The gamma-ray detectors (GRDs) of GECAM-C onborad SATech-01 satellite is designed to monitor gamma-ray transients all over the sky from 6 keV to 6 MeV. The energy response matrix is the key to do spectral measurements of bursts, which is usually generated from GEANT4 simulation and partially verified by the ground calibration. In this work, energy response matrix of GECAM-C GRD is cross-calibrated with Fermi/GBM and Swift/BAT using a sample of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters (SGRs). The calibration results show there is a good agreement between GECAM-C and other reasonably well calibrated instrument (i.e. Fermi/GBM and Swift/BAT). We also find that different GRD detectors of GECAM-C also show consistency with each other. All these results indicate that GECAM-C GRD can provide reliable spectral measurements., Comment: preliminary version, will be updated soon

Searching for X-ray and gamma-ray bursts, including Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters (SGRs) and high energy transients associated with Gravitational wave (GW) events or Fast radio bursts (FRBs), is of great importance in the multi-messenger and multi-wavelength era. Although a coherent search based on the likelihood ratio and Gaussian statistics has been established and utilized in many studies, this Gaussian-based method could be problematic for weak and short bursts which usually have very few counts. To deal with all bursts including weak ones, here we propose the coherent search in Poisson statistics. We studied the difference between Poisson-based and Gaussian-based search methods by Monte Carlo simulations, and find that the Poisson-based search method has advantages compared to the Gaussian case especially for weak bursts. Our results show that, for very weak bursts with very low number of counts, the Poisson-based search can provide higher significance than the Gaussian-based search, and its likelihood ratio (for background fluctuation) still generally follows the chi2 distribution, making the significance estimation of searched bursts very convenient. Thus, we suggest that the coherent search based on Poisson likelihood ratio is more appropriate in the search for generic transients including very weak ones., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

Gravitational wave high-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) is a pair of microsatellites (i.e. GECAM-A and GECAM-B) dedicated to monitoring gamma-ray transients including gravitational waves high-energy electromagnetic counterparts, Gamma-ray Bursts, Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters, Solar Flares and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes. Since launch in December 2020, GECAM-B has detected hundreds of astronomical and terrestrial events. For these bursts, localization is the key for burst identification and classification as well as follow-up observations in multi-wavelength. Here, we propose a Bayesian localization method with Poisson data with Gaussian background profile likelihood to localize GECAM bursts based on the burst counts distribution in detectors with different orientations. We demonstrate that this method can work well for all kinds of bursts, especially for extremely short ones. In addition, we propose a new method to estimate the systematic error of localization based on a confidence level test, which can overcome some problems of the existing method in literature. We validate this method by Monte Carlo simulations, and then apply it to a burst sample with accurate location and find that the mean value of the systematic error of GECAM-B localization is $\sim 2.5^{\circ}$. By considering this systematic error, we can obtain a reliable localization probability map for GECAM bursts. Our methods can be applied to other gamma-ray monitors., Comment: The paper has been accepted by Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series