Title
A Radio Flare in the Long-lived Afterglow of the Distant Short GRB 210726A: Energy Injection or a Reverse Shock from Shell Collisions?
Date Issued
2024
Author(s)
Schroeder, Genevieve
Rhodes, Lauren
Laskar, Tanmoy
Nugent, Anya
Rouco Escorial, Alicia
Rastinejad, Jillian C.
Fong, Wen-fai
van der Horst, Alexander J.
Veres, Péter
Alexander, Kate D.
Andersson, Alex
Berger, Edo
Blanchard, Peter K.
Chastain, Sarah
Christensen, Lise
Fender, Rob
Green, David A.
Groot, Paul
Heywood, Ian
Horesh, Assaf
Kilpatrick, Charles D.
Körding, Elmar
Lien, Amy
Malesani, Daniele B.
McBride, Vanessa
Mooley, Kunal
Rowlinson, Antonia
Sears, Huei
Stappers, Ben
Tanvir, Nial
Vergani, Susanna D.
Wijers, Ralph A. M. J.
Williams-Baldwin, David
Woudt, Patrick
DOI
10.3847/1538-4357/ad49ab
10.48550/arXiv.2308.10936
Abstract
We present the discovery of the radio afterglow of the short gamma-ray burst (GRB) 210726A, localized to a galaxy at a photometric redshift of z ∼ 2.4. While radio observations commenced ≲1 day after the burst, no radio emission was detected until ∼11 days. The radio afterglow subsequently brightened by a factor of ∼3 in the span of a week, followed by a rapid decay (a "radio flare"). We find that a forward shock afterglow model cannot self-consistently describe the multiwavelength X-ray and radio data, and underpredicts the flux of the radio flare by a factor of ≈5. We find that the addition of substantial energy injection, which increases the isotropic kinetic energy of the burst by a factor of ≈4, or a reverse shock from a shell collision are viable solutions to match the broadband behavior. At z ∼ 2.4, GRB 210726A is among the highest-redshift short GRBs discovered to date, as well as the most luminous in radio and X-rays. Combining and comparing all previous radio afterglow observations of short GRBs, we find that the majority of published radio searches conclude by ≲10 days after the burst, potentially missing these late-rising, luminous radio afterglows.
Subjects
Gamma-ray bursts
High energy astrophysics
Radio astronomy
Time domain astronomy
629
739
1338
2109
Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena