Constraints on Very High Energy Emission from GRB 130427A

Abstract

Prompt emission from the very fluent and nearby (z=0.34) gamma-ray burst GRB 130427A was detected by several orbiting telescopes and by ground-based, wide-field-of-view optical transient monitors. Apart from the intensity and proximity of this GRB, it is exceptional due to the extremely long-lived high-energy (100 MeV to 100 GeV) gamma-ray emission, which was detected by the Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope for ~70 ks after the initial burst. The persistent, hard-spectrum, high-energy emission suggests that the highest-energy gamma rays may have been produced via synchrotron self-Compton processes though there is also evidence that the high-energy emission may instead be an extension of the synchrotron spectrum. VERITAS, a ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope array, began follow-up observations of GRB 130427A ~71 ks (~20 hr) after the onset of the burst. The GRB was not detected with VERITAS; however, the high elevation of the observations, coupled with the low redshift of the GRB, make VERITAS a very sensitive probe of the emission from GRB 130427A for E > 100 GeV. The non-detection and consequent upper limit derived place constraints on the synchrotron self-Compton model of high-energy gamma-ray emission from this burst.

22 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (6)

• Fermi-LAT Observations of the Gamma-ray Burst GRB 130427A
• GRB 130427A: a Nearby Ordinary Monster
• High Energy Afterglow from Gamma-ray Bursts
• MAGIC upper limits on the very high energy emission from GRBs
• NuSTAR Observations of GRB130427A establish a single component synchrotron afterglow origin for the late optical to multi-GeV emission
• H.E.S.S. observations of gamma-ray bursts in 2003-2007

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• Nonlinear particle acceleration and thermal particles in GRB afterglows
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• Measuring Ambient Densities and Lorentz Factors of Gamma-Ray Bursts from GeV and Optical Observations
• A strong limit on the very-high-energy emission from GRB 150323A
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• On Integral Upper Limits Assuming Power Law Spectra and the Sensitivity in High-Energy Astronomy
• The H.E.S.S. II GRB Program