arXiv subjects

Zhao-Yang Peng

Publications and source records attributed to Zhao-Yang Peng.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Evolution of Thermal and Non-thermal Emission Components in GRB 250920C

We present a temporal and time-resolved spectral analysis of GRB 250920C using \textit{Fermi}/GBM and \textit{Swift}/BAT data. The prompt emission consists of two distinct episodes, EI and EII, separated by a significant quiescent interval. We perform Bayesian spectral fitting with empirical, thermal, composite, and physical synchrotron models. In EI, the spectra show clear evidence for an additional thermal component. The BB+PL model is preferred in most bright time bins, and joint \textit{Fermi}/GBM+\textit{Swift}/BAT fits further support the presence of this component. The blackbody temperature generally decreases with time, the blackbody flux follows the pulse profile, and the thermal flux fraction remains high. Fireball-parameter estimates give a photospheric Lorentz factor of a few hundred and an initial radius of $r_{0}\sim10^{9}$--$10^{10}$ cm, with $1+\sigma_{0}$ of order unity and $\eta\gg1$, supporting a thermally dominated baryonic outflow. In contrast, EII is dominated by non-thermal emission. Its low-energy photon indices do not significantly exceed the synchrotron line of death, and the spectra are well described by fast-cooling synchrotron radiation in a decaying magnetic field. The magnetization constraint gives $\sigma_{\min}\sim1.1$--$4.3$. Since these values exceed unity, they suggest that EII may be Poynting-flux dominated. These results therefore suggest a possible transition in GRB 250920C from a fireball-dominated EI phase to a Poynting-flux-dominated EII phase.

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arXiv2026

Modeling Gamma-Ray Burst Spectra with Convolutional Neural Networks: Fast-Cooling Synchrotron Emission in a Decaying Magnetic Field

The radiation mechanism of gamma-ray burst (GRB) prompt emission remains uncertain. Although the fast-cooling synchrotron model in a decaying magnetic field can account for the characteristic nonthermal spectral shape, its computational cost has limited its use in systematic observational fitting and statistical model comparison. We develop a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based spectral emulator for this physical model and train it on a large synthetic data set generated over a physically motivated parameter space. The trained network reproduces the numerical spectra with high fidelity while reducing the cost of spectral evaluation to the millisecond level. We then incorporate the emulator into a Bayesian spectral-analysis framework and apply it to the time-resolved spectra of GRB 231020A observed by Fermi/GBM. In most time intervals, the decaying-field fast-cooling synchrotron model provides better fits and smaller Bayesian information criterion values than the standard fast-cooling synchrotron model. These results suggest that a radially decaying magnetic field provides a plausible and more physically motivated interpretation of the prompt-emission spectrum of this burst, while also indicating that the emulator offers a practical route for large-sample Bayesian inference and systematic comparisons of GRB prompt-emission models.

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arXiv2026

Fast-Cooling Synchrotron in Decaying Magnetic Fields: Implications for the GRB Spectral Distribution

The prompt-emission spectra of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are commonly described by the empirical Band function. The typical low-energy spectral index is $\sim -1$, which poses a challenge to standard synchrotron radiation models. We systematically investigate a fast-cooling synchrotron model with a decaying magnetic field and test, within an observation-consistent pipeline, whether it reproduces the Band-fit parameter distributions in the GBM catalog, in a statistical sense. We solve the electron continuity equation with synchrotron, adiabatic, and synchrotron self-Compton cooling to obtain the time-dependent electron distribution and synthetic spectra; we then forward-fold through the GBM response matrices and recover $(\alpha, \beta, E_p)$ with Band fits. We find that magnetic-field decay can harden the recovered $\alpha$ relative to the fast-cooling limit in part of parameter space, but the effect is not robust and is sensitive to the location of $E_p$ within the finite band and to spectral curvature; varying key physical scales reshapes the recovered $\alpha$ distribution, indicating that catalog $\alpha$ often represents an effective in-band slope rather than the asymptotic index. SSC cooling provides modest additional hardening and, in our setups, does not stabilize $\alpha$ near the observed peak. Using Monte Carlo samples designed to mimic the observations, the model yields $\alpha$ mostly between $-1.5$ and $-0.8$, but remains centered around $\alpha \approx -1.5$. Overall, while decaying-field fast-cooling synchrotron can partially alleviate overly soft spectra expected from standard fast-cooling synchrotron emission, it still falls short of reproducing the GBM $\alpha$ distribution at the population level, implying that additional physical processes are required.

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arXiv2025

A re-identification of six Candidate Gravitationally Lensed Gamma-Ray Bursts

The gravitational lensing effect of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) holds significant and diverse applications in the field of astronomy. Nevertheless, the identification of millilensing events in GRBs presents substantial challenges. We re-evaluate the gravitational lensing candidacy of six previously proposed GRBs (GRB 081122A, GRB 081126A, GRB 090717A, GRB 110517B, GRB 200716C, and GRB 210812A) using a comprehensive set of temporal and spectral diagnostics. These include $χ^2$ light-curve similarity tests, photon-count-based hardness ratio ($HR_{count}$) comparisons, $T_{90}$ duration measurements, spectral lag, Norris pulse-shape fitting, and both time-resolved and time-integrated spectral analyses. We propose an evaluation framework, any single test that reveals a statistically significant inconsistency between the two pulses is sufficient to reject the lensing hypothesis for that burst.Although certain diagnostics, such as $T_{90}$ and parametric model fits, have known limitations, they are applied and interpreted in conjunction with the more robust, model-independent $χ^2$ and $HR_{count}$ tests. For all six GRBs, at least one diagnostic shows a significant discrepancy, leading us to conclude that none are consistent with a gravitational lensing interpretation.

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arXiv2025

A Study of the Spectral Properties of Gamma-Ray Bursts with the Main and Second Bursts

The origins of the main burst and second burst of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and the composition of their jets remain uncertain. To explore this complex subject more thoroughly, we conduct a spectral analysis on 18 GRBs with a main and a second burst observed by Fermi/GBM. First, we employ Bayesian time-resolved spectral analysis to compare the spectral components of the main and the second burst, finding that $83.3\%$ of the main and second bursts contain a thermal component. $67\%$ of the GRBs, the thermal component gradually decreased from the main to the second burst and the number of spectra exceeding the "Synchrotron line-of-death" is significantly higher in the main burst than in the second burst. Subsequently, we ascertain that for both the main and second bursts, $71.4\%$ of the low-energy spectral index $α$ and $77.8\%$ of the peak energy $E_{p}$ evolve in a similar fashion. There are $50.0\%$ and $72.2\%$ of the GRBs exhibit comparable correlations for the $Flux-α$ and $α-E_{p}$, respectively. For $Flux-E_{p}$ both the main and second burst show a positive correlation. Moreover, from the perspective of the temporal evolution of characteristic radii, the transition from the main to the second burst appeared to be seamless. Finally, we find that both the main and the second burst follow the same Amati relation and Yonetoku relation. Our analysis strongly indicates that the second burst is a continuation of the main burst and is highly likely to share a common physical origin.

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arXiv2024

Classification and physical characteristics analysis of Fermi-GBM Gamma-ray bursts based on Deep-learning

The classification of Gamma-Ray Bursts has long been an unresolved problem. Early long and short burst classification based on duration is not convincing due to the significant overlap in duration plot, which leads to different views on the classification results. We propose a new classification method based on Convolutional Neural Networks and adopt a sample including 3774 GRBs observed by Fermi-GBM to address the $T_\text{90}$ overlap problem. By using count maps that incorporate both temporal and spectral features as inputs, we successfully classify 593 overlapping events into two distinct categories, thereby refuting the existence of an intermediate GRB class. Additionally, we apply the optimal model to extract features from the count maps and visualized the extracted GRB features using the t-SNE algorithm, discovering two distinct clusters corresponding to S-type and L-type GRBs. To further investigate the physical properties of these two types of bursts, we conduct a time-integrated spectral analysis and discovered significant differences in their spectral characteristics. The analysis also show that most GRBs associated with kilonovae belong to the S-type, while those associated with supernovae are predominantly L-type, with few exceptions. Additionally, the duration characteristics of short bursts with extended emission suggest that they may manifest as either L-type or S-type GRBs. Compared to traditional classification methods (Amati and EHD methods), the new approach demonstrates significant advantages in classification accuracy and robustness without relying on redshift observations. The deep learning classification strategy proposed in this paper provides a more reliable tool for future GRB research.

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arXiv2024

A Study of the Spectral properties of Gamma-Ray Bursts with the Precursors and Main bursts

There is no consensus yet on whether the precursor and the main burst of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have the same origin, and their jet composition is still unclear. In order to further investigate this issue, we systematically search 21 Fermi GRBs with both precursor and main burst for spectral analysis. We first perform Bayesian time-resolved spectral analysis and find that almost all the precursors and the main bursts (94.4$\%$) exhibit thermal components, and the vast majority of them have low-energy spectral index ($α$) (72.2$\%$) that exceed the limit of synchrotron radiation. We then analyse the evolution and correlation of the spectral parameters and find that approximately half of the $α$ (50$\%$) of the precursors and the main bursts evolve in a similar pattern, while peak energy ($E_{p}$) (55.6$\%$) behave similarly, and their evolution is mainly characterized by flux tracking; for the $α-F$ (the flux) relation, more than half of the precursors and the main bursts (61.1$\%$) exhibit roughly similar patterns; the $E_{p}-F$ relation in both the precursor and main burst (100$\%$) exhibits a positive correlation of at least moderate strength. Next, we constrain the outflow properties of the precursors and the main bursts and find that most of them exhibit typical properties of photosphere radiation. Finally, we compare the time-integrated spectra of the precursors and the main bursts and find that nearly all of them are located in similar regions of the Amati relation and follow the Yonetoku relation. Therefore, we conclude that main bursts are continuations of precursors and they may share a common physical origin.

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arXiv2024

A comparative analysis of two peculiar long Gamma-ray bursts: GRB 230307A and GRB 211211A

GRB 211211A is a peculiar long Gamma-ray burst (GRB) with very high brightness and short burst properties. It's full lightcurve consists of three emission episodes, i.e. a precursor, a main burst and a extended emission. We find a recently detected long-duration GRB 230307A also includes the three consistent emission episodes. Furthermore, the two bursts have similar redshift 0.076 and 0.065, respectively. We perform a detail temporal and spectral analysis of the two GRBs to compare their temporal and spectral properties. Our analysis shows that the two bursts share great similarities for both the whole emission and the three corresponding emission phases, which are listed as follows: (1) they have near zero spectral lag, (2) they have very short minimum variability timescale (MVT), (3) they lie in the same region of in the MVT-$T_{90}$, Amati relation, and hardness-$T_{90}$ planes, (4) the three phases are quasi-thermal spectra, (5) both the peak energy and the low-energy index track the flux, (6) the time-resolved spectra are much wider than those of the blackbody prediced by theory model, (7) there are strong correlations between thermal flux and total flux and the correlation coefficients as well as the slopes for the corresponding stages are very consistent, (8) the photosphere emission properties are very consistent. Other investigations and observations suggest the two GRBs indeed belong to short burst with a compact star merger origin. Therefore, we think that GRB 230307A and GRB 211211A are the rare and similar GRBs and the photospheric radiation can interpret their radiation mechanisms.

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arXiv2021

A Comprehensive Consistency Check between Synchrotron radiation and the Observed Gamma-ray Burst Spectra

We performed a time-resolved spectral analysis of 53 bright gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by \textit{Fermi}/GBM. Our sample consists of 908 individual spectra extracted from the finest time slices in each GRB. We fitted them with the synchrotron radiation model by considering the electron distributions in five different cases: mono-energetic, single power-law, Maxwellian, traditional fast cooling, and broken power-law. Our results were further qualified through Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) by comparing with the fit by empirical models, namely the so-called Band function and cut-off power-law models. Our study showed that the synchrotron models, except for the fast-cooling case, can successfully fit most observed spectra, with the single power-law case being the most preferred. We also found that the electron distribution indices for the single power-law synchrotron fit in more than half of our spectra exhibits flux-tracking behavior, i.e., the index increases/decreases with the flux increasing/decreasing, implying that the distribution of the radiating electrons is increasingly narrower with time before the flux peaks and becomes more spreading afterward. Our results indicate that the synchrotron radiation is still feasible as a radiation mechanism of the GRB prompt emission phase.

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arXiv2020

Confirmed width-Eiso and width-Liso relations in GRB: comparison with the Amati and Yonetoku relations

In this paper, we select a sample including 141 BEST time-integrated F spectra and 145 BEST peak flux P spectra observed by the Konus-Wind with known redshift to recheck the connection between the spectral width and $E_{iso}$ as well as $L_{iso}$. We define six types of absolute spectral widths. It is found that all of the rest-frame absolute spectral widths are strongly positive correlated with $E_{iso}$ as well as $L_{iso}$ for the long burst for both the F and P spectra. All of the short bursts are the outliers for width-$E_{iso}$ relation and most of the short bursts are consistent with the long bursts for the width-$L_{iso}$ relation for both F and P spectra. Moreover, all of the location energy, $E_{2}$ and $E_{1}$, corresponding to various spectral widths are also positive correlated with $E_{iso}$ as well as $L_{iso}$. We compare all of the relations with the Amati and Yonetoku relations and find the width-$E_{iso}$ and width-$L_{iso}$ relations when the widths are at about 90\% maximum of the $EF_{E}$ spectra almost overlap with Amati relation and Yonetoku relation, respectively. The correlations of $E_{2}-E_{iso}$, $E_{1}-E_{iso}$ and $E_{2}-L_{iso}$, $E_{1}-L_{iso}$ when the location energies are at 99\% maximum of the $EF_{E}$ spectra are very close to the Amati and Yonetoku relations, respectively. Therefore, we confirm the existence of tight width-$E_{iso}$ and width-$L_{iso}$ relations for long bursts. We further show that the spectral shape is indeed related to $E_{iso}$ and $L_{iso}$. The Amati and Yonetoku relations are not necessarily the best relationships to relate the energy to the $E_{iso}$ and $L_{iso}$. They may be the special cases of the width-$E_{iso}$ and width-$L_{iso}$ relations or the energy-$E_{iso}$ and energy-$L_{iso}$ relations.

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