Investigation of Similarity in the Spectra between Short- and Long-Duration Gamma-ray Bursts

Abstract

We investigated the spectral properties of the prompt emission for short- and long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) using the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor data. In particular, we focused on comparing the spectral properties of short GRBs and the initial 2 s of long GRBs, motivated by the previous study of Ghirlanda et al. (2009). We confirmed the similarity in the low energy photon index α between short GRBs and the initial 2 s of long GRBs. Since about a quarter of our spectra of both short GRBs and the initial 2 s of long GRBs show α to be shallower than - 2 / 3 , it is difficult to understand in the context standard synchrotron emission.

Keywords

• gamma-ray burst
• prompt emission
• spectrum