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Detailed polarization measurements of the prompt emission of five gamma-ray bursts

Nature Astronomy volume 3, pages 258–264 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the strongest explosions in the Universe since the Big Bang. They are believed to be produced either in the formation of black holes at the end of massive star evolution1,2,3 or the merging of compact objects4. Spectral and timing properties of GRBs suggest that the observed bright gamma-rays are produced in the most relativistic jets in the Universe4; however, the physical properties (especially the structure and magnetic topologies) of the jets are still not well known, despite several decades of studies. It is widely believed that precise measurements of the polarization properties of GRBs should provide crucial information on the highly relativistic jets5. As a result, there have been many reports of GRB polarization measurements with diverse results (see ref. 6); however, many such measurements suffer from substantial uncertainties, most of which are systematic (ref. 7 and the references therein). After the first successful measurements by the Gamma-Ray Burst Polarimeter (GAP) and Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) instruments8,9,10, here we report a statistically meaningful sample of precise polarization measurements, obtained with the dedicated GRB polarimeter POLAR onboard China’s Tiangong-2 space laboratory. Our results suggest that the gamma-ray emission is at most polarized at a level lower than some popular models have predicted, although our results also show intrapulse evolution of the polarization angle. This indicates that the low polarization degrees could be due to an evolving polarization angle during a GRB.

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Fig. 1: Measured and best-fitting simulated modulation curves for all five GRBs and the second time interval of GRB 170114A.
Fig. 2: Posterior distributions of the polarization parameters for the five GRBs and the second time intervals of GRB 170114A.
Fig. 3: Cumulative probability functions of the polarization degree for the studied GRBs in this sample.

Data availability

All data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the POLAR Collaboration (merlin.kole@unige.ch) upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (grant number 2014CB845800); Joint Research Fund in Astronomy, under cooperative agreement between the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number U1631242); National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 11503028 and 11403028); Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number XDB23040400); Swiss Space Office of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (ESA PRODEX Programme); National Science Center of Poland (grant number 2015/17/N/ST9/03556); and Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number 2014009). We also thank J. M. Burgess of MPE, Garching, Germany, for providing the energy spectra for GRB 170114A.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Shuang-Nan Zhang, Merlin Kole.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shuang-Nan Zhang, Tian-Wei Bao, Jun-Ying Chai, Yong-Wei Dong, Han-Cheng Li, Lu Li, Zheng-Heng Li, Jiang-Tao Liu, Xin Liu, Hao-Li Shi, Li-Ming Song, Jian-Chao Sun, Rui-Jie Wang, Yuan-Hao Wang, Xing Wen, Bo-Bing Wu, Hua-Lin Xiao, Shao-Lin Xiong, Lai-Yu Zhang, Li Zhang, Xiao-Feng Zhang & Yong-Jie Zhang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shuang-Nan Zhang, Jun-Ying Chai, Han-Cheng Li, Zheng-Heng Li, Xin Liu, Li-Ming Song, Yuan-Hao Wang & Xing Wen

  3. Department of Nuclear and Particle Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Merlin Kole, Franck Cadoux, Silvio Orsi, Martin Pohl & Xin Wu

  4. National Centre for Nuclear Research, Otwock, Poland

    Tadeusz Batsch, Dominik Rybka, Jacek Szabelski, Teresa Tymieniecka & Anna Zwolinska

  5. ISDC/Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva, Versoix, Switzerland

    Tancredi Bernasconi, Neal Gauvin & Nicolas Produit

  6. School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Zi-Gao Dai & Mi-Xiang Lan

  7. Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education, Nanjing, China

    Zi-Gao Dai

  8. Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland

    Wojtek Hajdas, Radoslaw Marcinkowski & Hua-Lin Xiao

  9. Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Mi-Xiang Lan & Xue-Feng Wu

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  1. Shuang-Nan Zhang
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Contributions

T.-W.B., T.Batsch, T.Bernasconi, F.C., J.-Y.C., Y.-W.D., N.G., W.H., M.K., H.-C.L., L.L., Z.-H.L., J.-T.L., X.L., R.M., S.O., M.P., N.P., D.R., H.-L.S., L.-M.S., J.-C.S., J.S., T.T., R.-J.W., X.Wen, B.-B.W., X.Wu, H.-L.X., S.-L.X., L.-Y.Z., L.Z., S.-N.Z., X.-F.Z., Y.-J.Z. and A.Z. contributed to the development of the mission concept and/or construction and testing of POLAR. M.K., Z.-H.L., N.P., J.-C.S., Y.-H.W., S.-L.X. and S.-N.Z. were involved in the presented analysis. Z.-G.D., M.-X.L. and X.-F.W. contributed to the theoretical discussions. The manuscript was produced by M.K., Z.-H.L., J.-C.S., Y.-H.W. and S.-N.Z. The principal investigators of the POLAR collaboration are S.-N.Z., M.P. and X.Wu.

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Correspondence to Shuang-Nan Zhang or Merlin Kole.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1–12, Supplementary Tables 1–7, Supplementary References 1–20

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Zhang, SN., Kole, M., Bao, TW. et al. Detailed polarization measurements of the prompt emission of five gamma-ray bursts. Nat Astron 3, 258–264 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0664-0

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