The first extinction curve of a gamma-ray burst afterglow

Details The first extinction curve of a gamma-ray burst afterglow The first extinction curve of a gamma-ray burst afterglow

May 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007sptz.prop40388w&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #40388

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Scientific paper

In this proposal we intend to derive for the first time the absolute extinction curve of a single star-forming region at high redshift using a GRB afterglow, using a target of opportunity IRAC and MIPS 24 micron photometric observation to fix the level of the extinction-free continuum in the mid-infrared. Since GRBs occur in actively star-forming regions, it was anticipated that there should be significant dust extinction of their optical afterglows. But the extinctions derived solely from the reddening in GRB optical/near IR spectra have been low. At the same time these reddening measurements disagreed strongly with extinctions inferred from metallicity measurements and led to the suggestion of a flat dust extinction curve, possibly because of dust destruction by the GRB. In spite of the large literature on grey dust and the alteration of the extinction curve by dust destruction, its existence has so far never been demonstrated. The dust properties of GRB environments are of interest not only for their value in studies of GRB and their formation, but also because GRBs occur in star-forming galaxies at very high redshifts (currently = 2.8), and GRB afterglows give us a means to study dust and metallicity in the hearts of extremely distant star-forming regions that are accessible in no other way. These observations will be triggered on a burst where we have, (1) a good quality optical spectrum that shows a large damped Ly alpha absorption line, log N(HI) > 21.5, (2) a high signal-to-noise X-ray spectrum with a significant detection of extragalactic absorption and (3) multi-colour optical/near infrared (NIR) photometric follow-up of the afterglow near-simultaneous with the Spitzer observation.

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