Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1994-08-02
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
12 pages uuencoded compressed postscript including 3 figures, Princeton University Observatory preprint POP-567. Submitted to
Scientific paper
The recent discovery that faint gamma-ray bursts are stretched in time relative to bright ones has been interpreted as support for cosmological distances: faint bursts have their durations redshifted relative to bright ones. It was pointed out, however, that the relative time stretching can also be produced by an intrinsic correlation between duration and luminosity of gamma-ray bursts in a nearby, bounded distribution. While both models can explain the average amount of time stretching, we find a difference between them in the way the duration distribution of faint bursts deviates from that of bright ones, assuming the luminosity function of gamma-ray bursts is independent of distance. This allows us to distinguish between these two broad classes of model on the basis of the duration distributions of gamma-ray bursts, leading perhaps to an unambiguous determination of the distance scale of gamma-ray bursts. We apply our proposed test to the second BATSE catalog and conclude, with some caution, that the data favor a cosmological interpretation of the time dilation.
Paczyński Bohdan
Wijers Ralph A. M. J.
No associations
LandOfFree
On the nature of gamma-ray burst time dilations does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with On the nature of gamma-ray burst time dilations, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and On the nature of gamma-ray burst time dilations will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-317798