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Dust in the wind : the role of recent mass loss in long gamma-ray bursts Public Deposited

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  • We study the late-time (t > 0.5 days) X-ray afterglows of nearby (z < 0.5) long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with Swift and identify a population of explosions with slowly decaying, super-soft (photon index Γx > 3) X-ray emission that is inconsistent with forward shock synchrotron radiation associated with the afterglow. These explosions also show larger-than-average intrinsic absorption (NHx,i 6 10 cm > × 21 −2) and prompt γ-ray emission with extremely long duration (T90 > 1000 s). The chance association of these three rare properties (i.e., large NHx,i, super-soft Γx, and extreme duration) in the same class of explosions is statistically unlikely. We associate these properties with the turbulent mass-loss history of the progenitor star that enriched and shaped the circumburst medium. We identify a natural connection between NHx,i, Γx, and T90 in these sources by suggesting that the latetime super-soft X-rays originate from radiation reprocessed by material lost to the environment by the stellar progenitor before exploding (either in the form of a dust echo or as reprocessed radiation from a long-lived GRB remnant), and that the interaction of the explosionʼs shock/jet with the complex medium is the source of the extremely long prompt emission. However, current observations do not allow us to exclude the possibility that super-soft X-ray emitters originate from peculiar stellar progenitors with large radii that only form in very dusty environments.
  • This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by IOP Publishing and can be found at: http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/805/2/159/
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  • Margutti, R., Guidorzi, C., Lazzati, D., Milisavljevic, D., Kamble, A., Laskar, T., ... & Soderberg, A. M. (2015). Dust in the Wind: the Role of Recent Mass Loss in Long Gamma-Ray Bursts. The Astrophysical Journal, 805(2), 159. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/805/2/159
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  • 805
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  • 2
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  • R.M. is grateful to the Aspen Center for Physics and the NSF Grant #1066293 for hospitality during the completion of this work and for providing a stimulating environment that inspired this project. Support for this work was provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering awarded to A.M.S.
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