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Pulse characterization of long gamma-ray bursts with known redshift

Abstract:

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are one of the most promising tools in the study of cosmology. Luminosity, energy, light curve parameters and spectral characteristics could contribute to the calibration of standard candles in the Universe. Nevertheless, cosmological and non-cosmological effects are not well understood. Aiming to clarify those possible effects, we started to study the autocorrelation function (ACF) of a sample of GRBs with known redshift in the combined band from Swift (15150 keV) and Suzaku (505000 keV) satellites. We first confirmed the bimodal distribution of the cosmologically corrected ACF reported by Borgonovo et al., then looking at the energy evolution we found a bimodal distribution of the decay index of the ACF. For the next step we explored the intrinsic effects of the pulses within GRBs, determining the ACF of individual pulses in two different energy bands, as well as the skewness of the pulse. We found two kinds of internal effects, the increase of the asymmetry of the pulse with energy and the variability dependence on energy. Two types of pulses are distinguished, suggesting more than one physical process during the prompt emission. © 2010 ElsevierB.V. All rights reserved.