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Z. B. Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Z. B. Zhang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Towards Understanding the Origin of Swift Gamma-Ray Bursts Driven by Magnetars

We analyze a sample of\textit{ Swift} gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with extended emissions in $γ$-rays and/or X-ray plateaus that may be driven by magnetars. Multi-wavelength data and multi-standards have been adopted to investigate the issue jointly. First, we find that GRBs with both extended emission and X-ray plateau satisfy a three-parameter relation between the luminosity and the end time of X-ray plateaus and the $γ$-ray isotropic energy as $L_X\varpropto T_a^{-1.13}E_{γ,iso}^{0.74}$, which is consistent with that of normal GRBs. Second, we distinguish these GRBs in the plane of magnetic field versus period of neutron star and find that almost all GRBs but GRB 211024B have reasonable periods and majority of them could be powered by magnetars. Third, we standardize the X-ray afterglows with distinct characteristics and find that the standard X-ray light curves with/without plateaus are significantly different. The standardized X-ray plateaus are similar to the mean temporal profile of magnetars. Fourth, it is verified with a K-S test that all types of GRBs except short ones have the similar distributions of redshift and isotropic energy in the observer/rest frame. GRBs with internal plateaus are significantly different from those of normal long GRBs and GRBs with external plateaus and/or extended emissions. Interestingly, the isotropic energy distributions of GRBs with internal and external plateaus are identical with those of short and long GRBs, respectively. Overall, our study can bring solid evidence that the fascinating magnetars could have multi-formation channels to account for not only short but also long GRBs with either internal or external X-ray plateaus as well.

astro-ph.HE

Revealing Event Rate of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts

How the event rate of fast radio bursts (FRBs) evolves with redshift is a hot topic to explore their cosmological origin and the circum-burst environment. Particularly, it is urgent to know what the difference of event rates between repeating and non-repeating FRBs is. For the first time, we calculate the event rates of repeating FRBs detected by diverse telescopes at frequencies higher/lower than 1 GHz in this work. Luminosity and redshift are found to be positively correlated with a power law form for both high- and low-frequency FRBs, showing an obvious evolution of luminosity with redshift. Furthermore, we compare the differential luminosity and local event rate distributions of high- and low-luminosity FRBs at different frequencies. It is found that the event rates of these sub-samples of repeating FRBs similarly exceed the star formation rate at lower redshift than 1. Interestingly, we confirm with bootstrap method that the event rates of low-frequency FRBs exhibit different evolution patterns and are higher than that of high-frequency ones.

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Spectral Energy Correlations of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Structured Jets

Using 148 out-axis gamma-ray bursts, we build their spectrum-energy relations of peak energy versus isotropic energy, peak energy versus peak luminosity and peak energy versus jet-calibrated energy which are corrected for a structured jet model. These relations are found to depend on the observer's viewing angle as long as the observer is within the jet cone. After converting the out-axis energy relations to the in-axis situations, we find that the corresponding in-axis energy relations are universally steeper, of which all of them can be roughly interpreted by the Synchrotron radiation mechanism as shown in Xu et al.. Meanwhile, we notice that the in-axis means of isotropic energies are about one order of magnitude larger than the out-axis means for both short and long bursts except the Supernova-associated gamma-ray bursts. Furthermore, we apply all the newly-found energy relations to construct the Hubble diagrams of out/in-axis bursts. It is found that the in-axis Hubble diagrams are better cosmological indicators.

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Correlations between Event Rates of Short Gamma-Ray Bursts and Star Formation Rates with/without Time Delay

In this paper, we systematically investigate the redshift and luminosity distributions as well as the event rates of short Gamma-Ray Bursts (SGRBs) detected by Swift, Fermi, Konus-wind satellites. It is found that the distributions of redshift and luminosity of Fermi and Konus-wind SGRBs are identical and they obviously differ from those of Swift/BAT SGRBs. The luminosity distributions of SGRBs detected by diverse detectors can be uniformly fitted by a smoothly broken power-law function. The median luminosity of Swift SGRBs is about one order of magnitude smaller than that of Fermi/GBM or Konus-wind SGRBs. We also compare the local event rates of Swift/BAT, Fermi/GBM and Konus-wind SGRBs and find that the local rate of Swift SGRBs is around two orders of magnitude larger than that of either Fermi or Konus-wind SGRBs, while the latter two rates are comparable. The observed SGRB rates can be successfully fitted by a power-law plus Gauss function. The SGRB rates of three kinds of detectors matches the delayed/undelayed SFRs well except the delayed Lognormal and/or Gaussian SFRs at higher redshift and exceed all types of SFRs at lower redshift of $z<1$. After deducting the diverse SFR components from the SGRB rates, we surprisingly notice that the remaining SGRB rates steeply decline with redshift in a power-law-like form, indicating that these SGRBs could emerge from the old star populations or compact binary star mergers.

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Revisiting the energy distribution and formation rate of CHIME fast radio bursts

Based on the first CHIME/FRB catalogue, three volume-limited samples of fast radio bursts (FRBs) are built, with samples 1, 2, and 3 corresponding to a fluence cut of 5, 3, and 1, respectively. The Lynden-Bell's c$^-$ method was applied to study their energy function and event rate evolution with redshift ($z$). Using the non-parametric Kendall's $τ$ statistics, it is found that the FRB energy ($E$) strongly evolves with redshift as $E(z)\varpropto(1+z)^{1.24}$ for sample 1, $E(z)\varpropto(1+z)^{0.98}$ for sample 2, and $E(z)\varpropto(1+z)^{1.99}$ for sample 3. After removing the redshift dependence, the local energy distributions of the three samples can be well described by a broken power-law form with a broken energy of $\sim10^{40} \rm erg$. Meanwhile, the redshift distributions of samples 1 and 2 are identical but different from that of sample 3. Interestingly, we find that the event rates of samples 1 and 2 are independent of redshift, and sample 3 decreases as a single power-law form with an index of -2.41. The local event rates of the three samples of CHIME FRBs are found to be consistently close to $\sim 10^4\rm{\,Gpc^{-3}yr^{-1}}$, which is comparable with some previous estimates. In addition, we notice that the event rate of sample 3 FRBs with lower energies not only exceeds the star formation rate at the lower redshifts but also always declines with the increase in redshift. We suggest that the excess of FRB rates compared with the star formation rate at low redshift mainly results from the low-energy FRBs that could originate in the older stellar populations.

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Thickness-dependent Topological Phases and Flat Bands in Rhombohedral Multilayer Graphene

Rhombohedral multilayer graphene has emerged as an extraordinary platform for investigating exotic quantum states, such as superconductivity and fractional quantum anomalous Hall effects, mainly due to the existence of topological surface flatbands. Despite extensive research efforts, a systematic spectroscopic investigation on the evolution of its electronic structure from thin layers to bulk remains elusive. Using state-of-the-art angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with submicron spatial resolution, we directly probe and trace the thickness evolution of the topological electronic structures of rhombohedral multilayer graphene. As the layer number increases, the gapped subbands transform into the 3D Dirac nodes that spirals in the momentum space; while the flatbands are constantly observed around Fermi level, and eventually evolve into the topological drumhead surface states. This unique thickness-dependent topological phase transition can be well captured by the 3D generalization of 1D Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain in thin layers, to the topological Dirac nodal spiral semimetal in the bulk limit. Our findings establish a solid foundation for exploring the exotic quantum phases with nontrivial topology and correlation effects in rhombohedral multilayer graphene.

cond-mat.mes-hall

New evidence of multiple channels for the origin of gamma-ray bursts with extended emission

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most intense explosions in the universe. GRBs with extended emission (GRB EE) constitute a small subclass of GRBs. GRB EE are divided into EE-I GRBs and EE-II GRBs, according to the Amati empirical relationship rather than duration. We test here if these two types of GRB have different origins based on their luminosity function (and formation rate). Therefore, we use Lynden-Bell's c^- method to investigate the LF and FR of GRBs with EE without any assumption. We calculate the formation rate of two types of GRBs. For EE-I GRBs, the fitting function can be written as ρ(z) \propto {(1 + z)^{ - 0.34 \pm 0.04} for z < 2.39 and ρ(z) \propto {(1 + z)^{ - 2.34 \pm 0.24}} for z>2.39. The formation rate of EE-II can describe as ρ(z) \propto {(1 + z)^{ - 1.05 \pm 1.10}} for z<0.43 and ρ(z) \propto {(1 + z)^{ - 8.44 \pm 1.10}} for z>0.43. The local formation rate are ρ(0) = 0.03 Gpc^{-3}yr^{-1} for some EE-I GRBs and ρ(0) = 0.32 Gpc^{-3}yr^{-1} for EE-II GRBs. Based on these results, we provide a new evidence that the origins of EE-I GRBs are different from EE-II GRBs from the perspective of event rate. The EE-I GRB could be produced from the death of the massive star, but EE-II GRB bursts may come from other processes that are unrelated to the SFR. Our findings indicate that the GRB with EE could have multiple production channels.

astro-ph.HE

Properties of Gamma-Ray Bursts Associated with Supernovae and Kilonovae

We systematically compare the temporal and spectral properties of 53 Supernova (SN)-associated and 15 Kilonova (KN)-associated Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). We find that the spectral parameters of both types GRBs are identically and lognormally distributed, consistent with those normal GRBs. The bolometric luminosities of SN/GRBs and KN/GRBs have a triple form with the corresponding break luminosities of SN/GRBs are roughly two orders of magnitude larger than those of KN/GRBs. We build the power-law relations between the spectral lag and the luminosity of prompt $γ$-rays with indices of $-1.43\pm0.33$ for SN/GRBs and $-2.17\pm0.57$ for KN/GRBs in the laboratory frame, which are respectively coincident with the rest-frame values. We verify that both SN/GRBs and KN/GRBs comply with their own Amati relations that match those of long and short GRBs, respectively. Analyzing X-ray afterglows with good plateau segments, we build the power-law relations between the X-ray luminosity and the plateau time with an index of $-1.12\pm0.17$ for KN/GRBs and $-1.08\pm0.22$ for SN/GRBs, which can be well explained by the relativistic shock driven by an energy injection. The plots of luminosity-lag, Amati relation and luminosity-time show heavy overlap between the two types of GRBs, implying that they might share the same radiation mechanism despite originating from different progenitors or central engines.

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The origin of low-redshift event rate excess as revealed by the low-luminosity GRBs

The relation between the event rate of long Gamma-Ray Bursts at low redshift and the star formation rate is still controversial, especially in the low-redshift end. Dong et al. confirmed that the Gamma-Ray Burst rate always exceeds the star formation rate at low-redshift of z < 1 in despite of the sample completeness. However, the reason of low-redshift excess is still unclear. Considering low-luminosity bursts with smaller redshift generally, we choose three Swift long burst samples and classify them into low- and high-luminosity bursts in order to check whether the low-redshift excess is existent and if the excess is biased by the sample size and completeness. To degenerate the redshift evolution from luminosity, we adopt the non-parametric method to study the event rate of the two types of long bursts in each sample. It is found that the high-luminosity burst rates are consistent with the star formation rate within the whole redshift range while the event rates of low-luminosity bursts exceed the star formation rate at low redshift of z < 1. Consequently, we conclude that the low-redshift excess is contributed by the low-luminosity bursts with possibly new origins unconnected with the star formation, which is also independent of the sample size and the sample completeness.

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A Comparative Study of Luminosity Functions and Event Rate Densities of Long GRBs with Non-parametric Method

In this work, we restudy the dependence of luminosity function and event rates for different gamma-ray burst samples on the criteria of sample selection and threshold effect. To compare with many previous studies, we have chosen two samples including 88 and 118 long bursts with known redshift and peak flux over 2.6 ph cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$, from which 79 bursts are picked out to constitute our complete sample. It is found that the evolution of luminosity with redshift can be expressed by $L\propto(1+z)^k$ with a diverse $k$ relied more on the sample selection. Interestingly, the cumulative distributions of either non-evolving luminosities or redshifts are found to be also determined by the sample selection rather than the instrumental sensitivity. Nevertheless, the non-evolving luminosities of our samples are similarly distributed with a comparable break luminosity of $L_0\sim10^{51}$ erg s$^{-1}$. Importantly, we verify with a K-S test that three cases of event rates for the two burst samples evolve with redshift similarly except a small discrepancy due to sampling differences at low-redshift of $z<1$, in which all event rates show an excess of Gaussian profile instead of monotonous decline no matter whether the sample is complete. Most importantly, it is found that the burst rates violate the star formation rate at low redshift, while both of them are good in agreement with each other in the higher-redshift regions as many authors discovered previously. Therefore, we predict that two types of long bursts are favored in terms of their associations with both the star formation and the cosmic metallicity.

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Overall Spectral Properties of Prompt Emissions with Diverse Segments in Swift/BAT Short Gamma-ray Bursts

Owing to lack of multiple components of prompt $γ$-ray emissions in short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs), how these distinct components are correlated still keeps unclear. In this paper, we investigate the spectral and temporal properties of precursors, main peaks and extended emissions in 26 sGRBs including GRB 170817A. It is found that peak energies ($E_p$) in each pulse are uncorrelated with the pulse duration ($t_{dur}$). Meanwhile, we find that there is no obvious correlation between peak energy and energy fluence. Interestingly, there is no obvious spectral evolution from earlier precursors to later extended emissions in view of the correlations of $t_{dur}$ with either the $E_p$ or the low energy spectrum index, $α$. A power-law correlation between the average flux ($F_{p}$) and the energy fluence ($S_γ$), $log F_p=(0.62\pm0.07) log S_γ+ (0.27\pm0.07)$, is found to exist in the individual segments instead of mean peaks previously. Furthermore, we also find that the main peaks are on average brighter than the precursors or the extend emissions about one order of magnitude. On the basis of all the above analyses, one can conclude that three emissive components would share the same radiation mechanisms but they might be dominated by diverse physical processes.

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Long and Short Fast Radio Bursts are Different from Repeating and Non-repeating Transients

We collect 133 Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), including 110 non-repeating and 23 repeating ones, and systematically investigate their observational properties. To check the frequency dependence of FRB classifications, we define our samples with a central frequency below/above 1GHz as subsample I/II. We find that there is a clear bimodal distribution of pulse width for the subsample I. And If we classify FRBs into short FRBs (\emph{s}FRBs) ($<$100 ms) and long FRBs (\emph{l}FRBs) ($>$100 ms) as done for short and long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), the \emph{s}FRBs at higher central frequency are commonly shorter than those at lower central frequency not only for non-repeating but also repeating \emph{s}FRBs. Secondly, we find that fluence and peak flux density are correlated with a power law relation of $F \varpropto S{^γ_{p,obs}}$ for both \emph{s}FRBs and \emph{l}FRBs whose distributions are obviously different. Thirdly, the \emph{l}FRBs with isotropic energies ranging from $10^{42}$ to $10^{44}$ erg are more energetic than the \emph{s}FRBs in the $F- DM_{EX}$ plane, indicating that they are two representative types. Finally, it is interestingly note that the peak flux density behaves an independence on the redshift when the distance of the FRBs becomes far enough, which is similar to the scenario of peak flux evolving with redshift in the field of GRBs. We predict that fainter FRBs at higher redshift of $z>2$ can be successfully detected by FAST and SKA in the near future.

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How are gamma-ray burst radio afterglows populated?

We systematically analyze three GRB samples named as radio-loud, radio-quiet and radio-none afterglows, respectively. It is shown that dichotomy of the radio-loud afterglows is not necessary. Interestingly, we find that the intrinsic durations ($T_{int}$), isotropic energies of prompt gamma-rays ($E_{γ, iso}$) and redshifts ($z$) of their host galaxies are log-normally distributed for both the radio-loud and radio-quiet samples except those GRBs without any radio detections. Based on the distinct distributions of $T_{int}$, $E_{γ, iso}$, the circum-burst medium density ($n$) and the isotropic equivalent energy of radio afterglows ($L_{ν,p}$), we confirm that the GRB radio afterglows are really better to be divided into the dim and the bright types. However, it is noticeable that the distributions of flux densities ($F_{host}$) from host galaxies of both classes of radio afterglows are intrinsically quite similar. Meanwhile, we point out that the radio-none sample is also obviously different from the above two samples with radio afterglows observed, according to the cumulative frequency distributions of the $T_{int}$ and the $E_{γ, iso}$, together with correlations between $T_{int}$ and $z$. In addition, a positive correlation between $E_{γ, iso}$ and $L_{ν,p}$ is found in the radio-loud samples especially for the supernova-associated GRBs. Besides, we also find this positive correlation in the radio-quiet sample. A negative correlation between $T_{int}$ and $z$ is confirmed to hold for the radio-quiet sample too. The dividing line between short and long GRBs in the rest frame is at $T_{int}\simeq$1 s. Consequently, we propose that the radio-loud, the radio-quiet and the radio-none GRBs could be originated from different progenitors.

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Temporal Properties of Precursors, Main peaks and Extended Emissions of Short GRBs in the Third Swift/BAT GRB Catalog

A comprehensive study is given to short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) in the third Swift/BAT GRB Catalog from December 2004 to July 2019. We examine in details the temporal properties of the three components in the prompt gamma-ray emission phase, including precursors, main peaks and extended emissions (EE). We investigate the similarity of the main peaks between one-component and two-component sGRBs. It is found that there is no substantial difference among their main peaks. Importantly, comparisons are made between in the single-peaked sGRBs and the double-peaked sGRBs. It is found that our results of main peaks in Swift/BAT sGRBs are essentially consistent with those in CGRO/BATSE ones recently found in our paper I. Interestingly, we suspect, besides the newly-found MODE I/II evolution forms of pulses in BATSE sGRBs in paper I, that there would have more evolution modes of pulses across differently adjacent energy channels in view of the Swift/BAT observations. We further inspect the correlation of the main peaks with either the precursors or the EEs. We find that the main peaks tend to last longer than the precursors but shorter than the EEs. In particular, we verify the power-law correlations related with peak fluxes of the three components, strongly suggesting that they are produced from the similar central engine activities. Especially, we compare the temporal properties of GRB 170817A with other sGRBs with EE and find no obvious differences between them.

astro-ph.HE

Gamma-Ray Bursts with Extended Emission: Classifications, Energy Correlations and Radiation Properties

Thanks to more and more gamma-ray bursts with measured redshift and extended emission detected by the recent space telescopes, it is urgent and possible to check whether those previous energy correlations still satisfy for the particular sample involving only the bursts accompanied by tail radiations. Using 20 long and 22 short bursts with extended emission, we find that the popular $γ$-ray energy correlations of the intrinsic peak energy versus the isotropic energy (Amati relation) and the intrinsic peak energy versus the peak luminosity (Yonetoku relation) do exist in either short or long bursts. However, these gamma-ray bursts with extended emissions are much better to be reclassified into two subgroups of E-I and E-II that make the above energy correlations more tight. As proposed by Zhang et al. (2018), the energy correlations can be utilized to distinguish these kinds of gamma-ray bursts in the plane of bolometric fluence versus peak energy as well. Interestingly, the peculiar short GRB 170817A belongs to the E-I group in the fluence versus peak energy plane, but it is an outlier of both Amati and Yonetoku relations even though the off-axis effect has been corrected. Furthermore, we compare the radiation features between the extended emissions and the prompt gamma-rays in order to search for their possible connections. Taking into account all these factors, we conclude that gamma-ray bursts with extended emission are still required to model with dichotomic groups, namely E-I and E-II classes, respectively, which hints that they might be of different origins.

astro-ph.HE

On Spectral Peak Energy of Swift Gamma-Ray Bursts

Owing to narrow energy band of \textit{Swift}/BAT, several urgent issues are required to pay more attentions but unsolved so far. We systematically study the properties of a refined sample of 283 \textit{Swift}/BAT gamma-ray bursts with well-measured spectral peak energy ($E_{\text p}$) at a high confidence level larger than 3$σ$. It is interestingly found that duration ($T_{90}$) distribution of \textit{Swift} bursts still exhibits an evident bimodality with a more reliable boundary of $T_{90}\simeq$1.06 s instead of 2 s for previously contaminated samples including bursts without well-peaked spectra, which is very close to $\sim$1.27 s and $\sim$0.8 s suggested by some authors for Fermi/GBM and \textit{Swift}/BAT catalogs, respectively. The \textit{Swift}/BAT short and long bursts have comparable mean $E_{\text p}$ values of $87^{+112}_{-49}$ and $85^{+101}_{-46}$ keV in each, similar to what found for both types of BATSE bursts, which manifests the traditional short-hard/long-soft scheme may not be tenable for the certain energy window of a detector. In statistics, we also investigate the consistency of distinct methods for the $E_{\text p}$ estimates and find that Bayesian approach and BAND function can always give consistent evaluations. In contrast, the frequently-used cut-off power-law model matches two other methods for lower $E_{\text p}$ and will overestimate the $E_{\text p}$ more than 70\% as $E_{\text p}>$100 keV. Peak energies of X-ray flashes, X-ray rich bursts and classical gamma-ray bursts could have an evolutionary consequence from thermal-dominated to non-thermal-dominated radiation mechanisms. Finally, we find that the $E_{\text p}$ and the observed fluence ($S_γ$) in the observer frame are correlated as $E_p\simeq [S_γ/(10^{-5} erg\ cm^{-2})]^{0.28}\times 117.5^{+44.7}_{-32.4}$ keV proposed to be an useful indicator of GRB peak energies.

astro-ph.HE

Properties of Short GRB Pulses in the Fourth BATSE Catalog: Implications for Structure and Evolution of the Jetted Outflows

Considering the shortage of comparative studies on pulse temporal characteristics between single-peaked short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) and double-peaked sGRBs, we examine the pulse properties of a sample of 100 BATSE sGRBs using the BATSE Time-Tagged Event (TTE) data with a 5-ms resolution. 243 individual pulses of the single-peaked, double-peaked and triple-peaked sGRBs are fitted to get their statistical properties such as the pulse asymmetry, amplitude, peak time, and pulse width, etc. For the double-peaked sGRBs, according to the overlapping ratio between two adjacent peaks, we first define two kinds of double-peaked sGRBs as M-loose and M-tight types and find that most of the first pulses are similar to the single-peaked ones. We study the dependence of the Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) on the photon energy among different energy bands. Interestingly, it is found that a power-law relation with an index of -0.4 does exist between the FWHM and the photon energy for the single- and double-peaked sGRBs. More interestingly, we notice that the power-law relation with a positive index also exist for several special short bursts. In view of the three typical timescales of pulses, namely the angular spreading timescale, the dynamic timescale, and the cooling timescale, we propose that the diverse power-law indexes together with the profile evolution of GRB pulse can be used as an effective probe to diagnose the structure and evolution of the relativistically jetted outflows.

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The Redshift Dependence of the Radio Flux of Gamma-Ray Bursts and Their Host Galaxies

Using multiwavelength observations of radio afterglows, we confirm the hypothesis that the flux density of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) at a fixed observing frequency is invariable when the distance of the GRBs increases, which means the detection rate will be approximately independent of redshift. We study this behavior theoretically and find that it can be well explained by the standard forward shock model involving a thin shell expanding in either a homogeneous interstellar medium (ISM) or a wind environment. We also found that short GRBs and supernova-associated GRBs, which are at relatively smaller distances, marginally match the flux-redshift relationship and they could be outliers. We rule out the assumption that the medium density evolves with redshift as $n\propto(1+z)^4$ from the current measurements of $n$ and $z$ for short and long GRBs. In addition, the possible dependence of host flux on the redshift is also investigated. We find that a similar redshift independence of the flux exists for host galaxies as well, which implies that the detection rate of radio hosts might also be independent of the redshift. It is also hinted that most radio hosts have the spectral indices ranging from $β_h\simeq-1$ to 2.5 in statistics. Finally, we predict the detection rates of radio afterglows by the next-generation radio telescopes such as the Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) and the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

astro-ph.HE