Evidence for gravitational lensing of GRB 200716C

Abstract

Observationally, there is a small fraction of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with prompt emission observed by Fermi/GBM that are composed of two pulses. Occasionally, the distance to a GRB may be lensed when a high mass astrophysical object resides in the path between the GRB source and observer. In this paper, we describe GRB 200716C, which has a two-pulse emission and duration of a few seconds. We present a Bayesian analysis identifying gravitational lensing in both temporal and spectral properties, and calculate the time delay ($\hat{I}”t\sim 1.92$ s) and magnification (${\hat{I}}^3\sim 1.5$) between those two pulses based on the temporal fits. One can roughly estimate the lens mass to be about $2.4\times 10^5{M}_{\odot }$ in the rest frame. We also calculate the false alarm probability for this detection to be about 0.07\% with trial factors, and a present-day number density of about $808\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-3}$ with an energy density $\hat{I}\text{c◯}\sim 1.4\times 10^{-3}$. If the first pulse of this GRB near the trigger time is indeed gravitationally echoed by a second pulse, GRB 200716C may be a short GRB candidate with extended emission.

22 pages, 2 tables, 7 figures, ApJL in press, added two references