Short GRB 160821B: a reverse shock, a refreshed shock, and a well-sampled kilonova

Abstract

We report our identification of the optical afterglow and host galaxy of the short-duration gamma-ray burst GRB 160821B. The spectroscopic redshift of the host is $z=0.162$, making it one of the lowest redshift sGRBs identified by Swift. Our intensive follow-up campaign using a range of ground-based facilities as well as HST, XMM and Swift, shows evidence for a late-time excess of optical and near-infrared emission in addition to a complex afterglow. The afterglow light-curve at X-ray frequencies reveals a narrow jet, ${\theta }_j\sim 1.9_{-0.03}^{+0.10}$ deg, that is refreshed at $>1$ day post-burst by a slower outflow with significantly more energy than the initial outflow that produced the main GRB. Observations of the 5 GHz radio afterglow shows a reverse shock into a mildly magnetised shell. The optical and near-infrared excess is fainter than AT2017gfo associated with GW170817, and is well explained by a kilonova with dynamic ejecta mass $M_{\mathrm{dyn}}=(1.0\pm 0.6)\times 10^{-3}$ M${}_{\odot }$ and a secular (postmerger) ejecta mass with $M_{\mathrm{pm}}=(1.0\pm 0.6)\times 10^{-2}$ M${}_{\odot }$, consistent with a binary neutron star merger resulting in a short-lived massive neutron star. This optical and near-infrared dataset provides the best-sampled kilonova light-curve without a gravitational wave trigger to date.

17 pages, 6 figures, Version accepted by ApJ

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