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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 2(827), p. 102, 2016

DOI: 10.3847/0004-637x/827/2/102

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An Achromatic Break in the Afterglow of the Short GRB 140903A: Evidence for a Narrow Jet

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We report the results of our observing campaign on GRB 140903A, a nearby (z = 0.351) short-duration (T90 ∼ 0.3 s) gamma-ray burst discovered by Swift. We monitored the X-ray afterglow with Chandra up to 15 days after the burst and detected a steeper decay of the X-ray flux after tj ≈ 1 day. Continued monitoring at optical and radio wavelengths showed a similar decay in flux at nearly the same time, and we interpret it as evidence of a narrowly collimated jet. By using the standard fireball model to describe the afterglow evolution, we derive a jet opening angle θj ≈ 5° and a collimation-corrected total energy release E ≈ 2 × 1050 erg. We further discuss the nature of the GRB progenitor system. Three main lines disfavor a massive star progenitor: the properties of the prompt gamma-ray emission, the age and low star formation rate of the host galaxy, and the lack of a bright supernova. We conclude that this event likely originated from a compact binary merger. © 2016.