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Teraelectronvolt emission from the γ-ray burst GRB 190114C

Nature volume 575, pages 455–458 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Long-duration γ-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous sources of electromagnetic radiation known in the Universe. They arise from outflows of plasma with velocities near the speed of light that are ejected by newly formed neutron stars or black holes (of stellar mass) at cosmological distances1,2. Prompt flashes of megaelectronvolt-energy γ-rays are followed by a longer-lasting afterglow emission in a wide range of energies (from radio waves to gigaelectronvolt γ-rays), which originates from synchrotron radiation generated by energetic electrons in the accompanying shock waves3,4. Although emission of γ-rays at even higher (teraelectronvolt) energies by other radiation mechanisms has been theoretically predicted5,6,7,8, it has not been previously detected7,8. Here we report observations of teraelectronvolt emission from the γ-ray burst GRB 190114C. γ-rays were observed in the energy range 0.2–1 teraelectronvolt from about one minute after the burst (at more than 50 standard deviations in the first 20 minutes), revealing a distinct emission component of the afterglow with power comparable to that of the synchrotron component. The observed similarity in the radiated power and temporal behaviour of the teraelectronvolt and X-ray bands points to processes such as inverse Compton upscattering as the mechanism of the teraelectronvolt emission9,10,11. By contrast, processes such as synchrotron emission by ultrahigh-energy protons10,12,13 are not favoured because of their low radiative efficiency. These results are anticipated to be a step towards a deeper understanding of the physics of GRBs and relativistic shock waves.

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Fig. 1: Light curves in the kiloelectronvolt, gigaelectronvolt and teraelectronvolt bands, and spectral evolution in the teraelectronvolt band for GRB 190114C.
Fig. 2: Spectrum above 0.2 TeV averaged over the period between T0 + 62 s and T0 + 2,454 s for GRB 190114C.
Fig. 3: Distribution of the number of teraelectronvolt-band γ-rays in time and energy for GRB 190114C.

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Data availability

Raw data were generated at the MAGIC telescopes large-scale facility. Derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon request. Source data for Figs. 1–3 are provided with the paper.

Code availability

Proprietary data reconstruction codes were generated at the MAGIC telescope large-scale facility. Information supporting the findings of this study is available from the corresponding authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to G. Sinnis for remarks that helped us improve the format and content of this manuscript. We dedicate this paper to the memory of E. Lorenz. With his innovative spirit, infinite enthusiasm and vast knowledge of experimental methods, techniques and materials, he played a key role in optimizing the design of MAGIC, specifically for observations of GRBs. We thank the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias for the excellent working conditions at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma. We acknowledge financial support by the German BMBF and MPG, the Italian INFN and INAF, the Swiss National Fund (SNF), the ERDF under the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FPA2017-87859-P, FPA2017-85668-P,FPA2017-82729-C6-2-R, FPA2017-82729-C6-6-R, FPA2017-82729-C6-5-R, AYA2015-71042-P,AYA2016-76012-C3-1-P,ESP2017-87055-C2-2-P,FPA2017-90566-REDC), the Indian Department of Atomic Energy, the Japanese JSPS and MEXT, the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, National RI Roadmap Project DO1-153/28.08.2018, and the Academy of Finland for grant number 320045. This work was also supported by the Spanish Centro de Excelencia ‘Severo Ochoa’ SEV-2016-0588 and SEV-2015-0548 and Unidad de Excelencia ‘María de Maeztu’ MDM-2014-0369, by the Croatian Science Foundation (HrZZ) Project IP-2016-06-9782 and the University of Rijeka Project 13.12.1.3.02, by the DFG Collaborative Research Centers SFB823/C4 and SFB876/C3, the Polish National Research Centre grant UMO-2016/22/M/ST9/00382, and by the Brazilian MCTIC, CNPq and FAPERJ. S.I. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP17K05460, MEXT, Japan, the RIKEN iTHEMS programme and the joint research programme of ICRR, University of Tokyo. L. Nava acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement number 664931. K. Noda is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP19K21043, MEXT, Japan. A. Berti acknowledges support from the Physics Department of the University of Torino (through funding from the Department of Excellence) and from the Torino division of the Italian INFN. E. Moretti acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement number 665919.

Author information

Author notes

  1. A. Carosi

    Present address: Laboratoire d’Annecy de Physique des Particules, Université Grenoble Alpes, Université Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LAPP, Annecy, France

  2. *A list of participants and their affiliations appears at the end of the paper

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and Departamento Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain

    V. A. Acciari, J. Becerra González, E. Colombo, R. J. García López, J. Herrera, A. López-Oramas, A. Somero, G. Vanzo & M. Vazquez Acosta

  2. Università di Udine and INFN Trieste, Udine, Italy

    S. Ansoldi, B. De Lotto, A. Donini, F. Longo, D. Miceli, M. Palatiello, M. Peresano & M. Persic

  3. Japanese MAGIC Consortium, Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    S. Ansoldi, H. Kubo, S. Masuda & S. Nozaki

  4. National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), Rome, Italy

    L. A. Antonelli, C. Bigongiari, A. Carosi, S. Covino, V. D’Elia, F. Dazzi, G. Ferrara, S. Gallozzi, A. Lamastra, F. Leone, S. Lombardi, L. Maraschi, C. Righi, A. Stamerra, F. Tavecchio & L. Nava

  5. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    A. Arbet Engels & A. Biland

  6. Technische Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    D. Baack, D. Elsaesser, A. Fattorini, M. Nöthe, W. Rhode & K. Schmidt

  7. Croatian Consortium, University of Zagreb – FER, Zagreb, Croatia

    A. Babić, Ž. Bošnjak & S. Cikota

  8. Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, HBNI, Kolkata, India

    B. Banerjee & P. Majumdar

  9. Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas (CBPF), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    U. Barres de Almeida & B. Machado de Oliveira Fraga

  10. IPARCOS Institute and EMFTEL Department, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    J. A. Barrio, J. L. Contreras, D. Fidalgo, M. V. Fonseca, J. Hoang, M. López, D. Morcuende, P. Peñil & L. Saha

  11. University of Łódź, Department of Astrophysics, Łódź, Poland

    W. Bednarek, J. Sitarek & D. Sobczynska

  12. Università di Siena and INFN Pisa, Siena, Italy

    L. Bellizzi, G. Bonnoli, J. M. Miranda & R. Paoletti

  13. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Zeuthen, Germany

    E. Bernardini, W. Bhattacharyya, M. Garczarczyk, C. Nigro & K. Satalecka

  14. Università di Padova and INFN, Padua, Italy

    E. Bernardini, G. Busetto, A. De Angelis, M. Doro, A. Fernández-Barral, L. Foffano, R. López-Coto, M. Mallamaci, M. Mariotti, S. Paiano & E. Prandini

  15. Istituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Frascati, Italy

    A. Berti, D. Depaoli, F. Di Pierro, L. Di Venere, N. Giglietto, F. Giordano, S. Loporchio, L. Tosti, V. Vagelli, C. F. Vigorito & V. Vitale

  16. Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Munich, Germany

    J. Besenrieder, G. Ceribella, Y. Chai, U. Colin, G. D’Amico, C. Fruck, D. Green, A. Hahn, M. Hütten, K. Ishio, D. Mazin, R. Mirzoyan, D. Paneque, T. Schweizer, D. Strom, M. Strzys, Y. Suda, M. Teshima, J. van Scherpenberg, I. Vovk & M. Will

  17. Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Barcelona, Spain

    O. Blanch, S. M. Colak, M. Delfino, J. Delgado, E. Do Souto Espiñeira, D. Guberman, L. Jouvin, D. Kerszberg, M. Martínez, A. Moralejo, E. Moretti, D. Ninci, L. Nogués, J. Palacio & J. Rico

  18. Università di Pisa and INFN Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    R. Carosi, P. Da Vela, P. G. Prada Moroni & A. Rugliancich

  19. The Armenian Consortium, ICRANet-Armenia at NAS RA, A. Alikhanyan National Laboratory, Yerevan, Armenia

    A. Chilingaryan, S. Gasparyan & N. Sahakyan

  20. Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Madrid, Spain

    J. Cortina

  21. Port d’Informació Científica (PIC), Barcelona, Spain

    M. Delfino & J. Delgado

  22. Croatian Consortium, Department of Physics, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia

    D. Dominis Prester, M. Manganaro, S. Mićanović & T. Terzić

  23. Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    D. Dorner & K. Mannheim

  24. Finnish MAGIC Consortium, Finnish Centre of Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    V. Fallah Ramazani, E. Lindfors & K. Nilsson

  25. Departament de Física and CERES-IEEC, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

    L. Font, M. Gaug, C. Maggio, V. Moreno & P. Munar-Adrover

  26. Japanese MAGIC Consortium, ICRR, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan

    S. Fukami, D. Hadasch, T. Inada, Y. Iwamura, D. Mazin, K. Noda, T. Saito, S. Sakurai, M. Takahashi & M. Teshima

  27. Croatian Consortium, University of Split – FESB, Split, Croatia

    N. Godinović, D. Lelas, I. Puljak & D. Zarić

  28. Croatian Consortium, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia

    D. Hrupec

  29. Japanese MAGIC Consortium, RIKEN, Wako, Japan

    S. Inoue

  30. Japanese MAGIC Consortium, Tokai University, Hiratsuka, Japan

    J. Kushida, K. Nishijima & S. Tsujimoto

  31. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    F. Longo

  32. Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe (IFPU), Trieste, Italy

    F. Longo & L. Nava

  33. Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

    M. Makariev, G. Maneva, M. Minev & P. Temnikov

  34. Universitat de Barcelona, ICCUB, IEEC-UB, Barcelona, Spain

    E. Molina, J. M. Paredes, M. Ribó & N. Torres-Albà

  35. Finnish MAGIC Consortium, Astronomy Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    V. Neustroev

  36. Croatian Consortium, Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia

    I. Šnidarić, T. Surić & T. Terzić

  37. Istituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Trieste, Italy

    L. Nava

Consortia

MAGIC Collaboration

  • V. A. Acciari
  • , S. Ansoldi
  • , L. A. Antonelli
  • , A. Arbet Engels
  • , D. Baack
  • , A. Babić
  • , B. Banerjee
  • , U. Barres de Almeida
  • , J. A. Barrio
  • , J. Becerra González
  • , W. Bednarek
  • , L. Bellizzi
  • , E. Bernardini
  • , A. Berti
  • , J. Besenrieder
  • , W. Bhattacharyya
  • , C. Bigongiari
  • , A. Biland
  • , O. Blanch
  • , G. Bonnoli
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  • , P. Munar-Adrover
  • , V. Neustroev
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  • , M. Nöthe
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  • , V. Vitale
  • , I. Vovk
  • , M. Will
  • , D. Zarić
  •  & L. Nava

Contributions

The MAGIC telescope system was designed and constructed by the MAGIC Collaboration. The operation, data processing, calibration, Monte Carlo simulations of the detector and of theoretical models, and data analyses were performed by the members of the MAGIC Collaboration, who also discussed and approved the scientific results. All MAGIC collaborators contributed to the editing and comments to the final version of the manuscript. S.I. and L. Nava coordinated the interpretation of the data and, together with S. Covino, wrote the corresponding sections and contributed to the structuring and editing of the rest of the paper. K. Noda and A. Berti coordinated the analysis of the MAGIC data; together with E. Moretti they contributed to the analysis and the writing of the relevant sections. I.V. performed the Fermi-LAT analysis and, together with D. Miceli contributed to the calculation of limits, excesses and the curves in Fig. 3. R.M. contributed to coordinating, structuring and editing this paper.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Peer review information Nature thanks Gus Sinnis and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Light curves in the teraelectronvolt and kiloelectronvolt bands for GRB 190114C.

Photon flux light curve above 0.3 TeV measured by MAGIC (red; from T0 + 62 s to T0 + 210 s), compared with that between 15 keV and 50 keV measured by Swift-BAT73 (grey; from T0 to T0 + 210 s) and the photon flux above 0.3 TeV of the Crab Nebula (blue dashed line). The errors on the MAGIC photon fluxes correspond to one standard deviation. Vertical lines indicate the times when the alert was received (T0 + 22 s) by MAGIC, when the tracking of the GRB by the telescopes started (T0 + 50 s), when the data acquisition started (T0 + 57 s), and when the data acquisition system (DAQ) became stable (T0 + 62 s; dotted line).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Significance of the γ-ray signal between T0 + 62 s and T0 + 1,227 s for GRB 190114C.

Distribution of the squared angular distance, θ2, for the MAGIC data (points) and background events (grey shaded area). θ2 is defined as the squared angular distance between the nominal position of the source and the reconstructed arrival direction of the events. The dashed vertical line represents the value of the cut on θ2. This defines the signal region, where the number of events coming from the source (Non) and from the background (Noff) are computed. The errors for ‘on’ events are derived from Poissonian statistics. From Non and Noff, the number of excess events (Nex) is computed. The significance is calculated using the Li & Ma method42.

Extended Data Table 1 Energy flux between 0.3 and 1 TeV in selected time bins for GRB 190114C
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Extended Data Table 2 Number of γ-rays from GRB 190114C in the highest-energy bins
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Extended Data Table 3 Observed and expected number of events in estimated-energy bins for GRB 190114C
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Extended Data Table 4 Spectral indices for different EBL models
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Extended Data Table 5 List of GRBs observed under adequate technical and weather conditions by MAGIC with z < 1 and Tdelay < 1 h
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MAGIC Collaboration. Teraelectronvolt emission from the γ-ray burst GRB 190114C. Nature 575, 455–458 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1750-x

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