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Temporal behaviour of emissions from Gamma-ray bursts and optical/near-IR afterglows of GRB 991208 and GRB 991216

R. Sagar·V. Mohan·A. K. Pandey·S. B. Pandey·A. J. Castro-Tirado
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Abstract

The CCD magnitudes in Cousins R and I photometric passbands are determined for GRB 991216 and GRB 991208 afterglows respectively about 1 and about 3 day after trigger of the corresponding gamma-ray bursts. Light curves of the afterglow emissions are obtained by combining the published data with the present measurements in R and I passbands for GRB 991208 and in R, Gunn I and J passbands for GRB 991216. They indicate that the flux decay constants of a GRB are almost the same in each passband with values about 2.2 for GRB 991208 and about 1.2 for GRB 991216 indicating very fast optical flux decay in the case of former which may be due to beaming effect. However, cause of steepening by 0.23 +/- 0.06 dex in the R light curve of GRB 991216 afterglow between 2 to 2.5 day after the burst, is presently not understood. Redshift determinations indicate that both GRBs are at cosmological distance with a value of 4.2 Gpc for GRB 991208 and 6.2 Gpc for GRB 991216. The observed fluence above 20 keV indicates, if isotropic, release of energy about 1.3 x 10^{53} erg for GRB 991208 and about 6.7 x 10^{53} erg for GRB 991216 by these bright gamma-ray flashes. The enormous amount of released energy will be reduced, if the radiation is beamed which seems to be case for GRB 991208 afterglow.The quasi-simultaneous broad-band photometric spectral energy distributions of the afterglows are determined about 8.5 day and about 35 hour after the bursts of GRB 991208 and GRB 991216 respectively.The flux decreases exponentially with frequency. The value of spectral index in the optical-near IR region is -0.75 +/- 0.03 for GRB 991208 and -1.0 +/- 0.12 for GRB 991216.

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R. Sagar, V. Mohan, A. K. Pandey, S. B. Pandey, A. J. Castro-Tirado. 2000-03-17. Temporal behaviour of emissions from Gamma-ray bursts and optical/near-IR afterglows of GRB 991208 and GRB 991216. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0003257

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