A nearby long gamma-ray burst from a merger of compact objects

E Troja; C L Fryer; B O'Connor; G Ryan; S Dichiara; A Kumar; N Ito; R Gupta; R T Wollaeger; J P Norris; N Kawai; N R Butler; A Aryan; K Misra; R Hosokawa; K L Murata; M Niwano; S B Pandey; A Kutyrev; H J van Eerten; E A Chase; Y-D Hu; M D Caballero-Garcia; A J Castro-Tirado

doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05327-3

A nearby long gamma-ray burst from a merger of compact objects

Nature. 2022 Dec;612(7939):228-231. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05327-3. Epub 2022 Dec 7.

Authors

E Troja^{1

2}, C L Fryer³, B O'Connor^{4

5

6

7}, G Ryan⁸, S Dichiara⁹, A Kumar^{10

11

12}, N Ito¹³, R Gupta^{10

14}, R T Wollaeger³, J P Norris¹⁵, N Kawai¹³, N R Butler¹⁶, A Aryan^{10

14}, K Misra¹⁰, R Hosokawa¹³, K L Murata¹³, M Niwano¹³, S B Pandey¹⁰, A Kutyrev^{17

18}, H J van Eerten¹⁹, E A Chase³, Y-D Hu²⁰, M D Caballero-Garcia²⁰, A J Castro-Tirado^{20

21}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy. [email protected].
² School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. [email protected].
³ Center for Theoretical Astrophysics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. [email protected].
⁵ Astronomy, Physics and Statistics Institute of Sciences (APSIS), The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. [email protected].
⁶ Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. [email protected].
⁷ Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA. [email protected].
⁸ Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
⁹ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁰ Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital, India.
¹¹ School of Studies in Physics and Astrophysics, Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University, Chattisgarh, India.
¹² Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
¹³ Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.
¹⁴ Department of Physics, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, India.
¹⁵ Department of Physics, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA.
¹⁶ School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
¹⁸ Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
¹⁹ Physics Department, University of Bath, Bath, UK.
²⁰ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA), CSIC, Granada, Spain.
²¹ Unidad Asociada al CSIC Departamento de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain.

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of high-energy radiation arising from energetic cosmic explosions. Bursts of long (greater than two seconds) duration are produced by the core-collapse of massive stars¹, and those of short (less than two seconds) duration by the merger of compact objects, such as two neutron stars². A third class of events with hybrid high-energy properties was identified³, but never conclusively linked to a stellar progenitor. The lack of bright supernovae rules out typical core-collapse explosions^4-6, but their distance scales prevent sensitive searches for direct signatures of a progenitor system. Only tentative evidence for a kilonova has been presented^7,8. Here we report observations of the exceptionally bright GRB 211211A, which classify it as a hybrid event and constrain its distance scale to only 346 megaparsecs. Our measurements indicate that its lower-energy (from ultraviolet to near-infrared) counterpart is powered by a luminous (approximately 10⁴² erg per second) kilonova possibly formed in the ejecta of a compact object merger.

A nearby long gamma-ray burst from a merger of compact objects

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