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RAPTOR Observations of Delayed Explosive Activity in the High-Redshift Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 060206

2006; IOP Publishing; Volume: 642; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/504796

1538-4357

P. R. Woźniak, W. T. Vestrand, J. Wren, R. R. White, S. M. Evans, D. Casperson,

Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies

The Rapid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) system at Los Alamos National Laboratory observed GRB 060206 starting 48.1 minutes after γ-ray emission triggered the Burst Alert Telescope on board the Swift satellite. The afterglow light curve measured by RAPTOR shows a spectacular rebrightening by ~1 mag about 1 hr after the trigger and peaks at R ~ 16.4 mag. Shortly after the onset of the explosive rebrightening, the optical transient doubled its flux on a timescale of about 4 minutes. The total R-band fluence received from GRB 060206 during this episode is 2.3 × 10-9 ergs cm-2. In the rest frame of the burst (z = 4.045), this yields an isotropic equivalent energy release of Eiso ~ 0.7 × 1050 ergs in just a narrow UV band, λ ≃ 130 ± 22 nm. We discuss the implications of RAPTOR observations for untriggered searches for fast optical transients and studies of GRB environments at high redshift.