Signatures of the Self-organized Criticality Phenomenon in Precursors of Gamma-Ray Bursts

Autor: Xiu-Juan Li, Yu-Peng Yang
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol 955, Iss 2, p L34 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2041-8213
2041-8205
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acf12c
Popis: Precursors provide important clues to the nature of gamma-ray burst (GRB) central engines and can be used to contain GRB physical processes. In this Letter, we study the self-organized criticality in precursors of long GRBs in the third Swift/Burst Alert Telescope catalog. We investigate the differential and cumulative size distributions of 100 precursors, including peak flux, duration, rise time, decay time, and quiescent time with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique. It is found that all of the distributions can be well described by power-law models and understood within the physical framework of a self-organized criticality system. In addition, we inspect the cumulative distribution functions of the size differences with a q -Gaussian function. The scale-invariance structures of precursors further strengthen our findings. Particularly, similar analyses are made in 127 main bursts. The results show that both precursors and main bursts can be attributed to a self-organized criticality system with the spatial dimension S = 3 and driven by a similar magnetically dominated process.
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