Revisiting the Redshift Distribution of Gamma Ray Bursts in the Swift Era

Abstract

Le & Dermer developed a gamma-ray burst (GRB) model to fit the redshift and the jet opening angle distributions measured with pre-Swift and Swift missions and showed that GRBs do not follow the star formation rate. Their fitted results were obtained without the opening angle distribution from Swift with an incomplete Swift sample, and that the calculated jet opening angle distribution was obtained by assuming a flat $\nu F_{\nu }$ spectrum. In this paper, we revisit the work done by Le & Dermer with an assumed broken power law GRB spectrum. Utilizing more than 100 GRBs in the Swift sample that include both the observed estimated redshifts and jet opening angles, we obtain a GRB burst rate functional form that gives acceptable fits to the pre-Swift and Swift redshift and jet opening angle distributions with an indication that an excess of GRBs exists at low redshift below $z\approx 2$. The mean redshifts and jet opening angles for pre-Swift~(Swift) are $⟨z⟩\sim 1.3$ ($1.7$) and $⟨{\theta }_{\mathrm{j}}⟩\sim 7^o$ ($11^o$), respectively. Assuming a GRB rate density (SFR9), similar to the Hopkins & Beacom star formation history and as extended by Li, the fraction of high-redshift GRBs is estimated to be below 10% and 5% at $z\ge 4$ and $z\ge 5$, respectively, and below 10% at $z\le 1$.

accepted for publication in ApJ. The paper contains 14 pages and 7 figures (v1); last revised 21 Feb. 2017 (this version, v2)

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• The large-scale environment from cosmological simulations I: The baryonic cosmic web
• The Consequences of Gamma-ray Burst Jet Opening Angle Evolution on the Inferred Star Formation Rate
• Resolving the Excess of Long GRBs at low redshift in the Swift Era