Early polarization observations of the optical emission of gamma-ray bursts: GRB150301B and GRB150413A [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.02641


We report early optical linear polarization observations of two gamma-ray bursts made with the MASTER robotic telescope network. We found the minimum polar- ization for GRB150301B to be 8% at the beginning of the initial stage, whereas we detected no polarization for GRB150413A either at the rising branch or after the burst reached the power-law afterglow stage. This is the earliest measurement of the polarization (in cosmological rest frame) of gamma-ray bursts. The primary intent of the paper is to discover optical emission and publish extremely rare (unique) high- quality light curves of the prompt optical emission of gamma-ray bursts during the non-monotonic stage of their evolution. We report that our team has discovered the optical counterpart of one of the bursts, GRB150413A.

Read this paper on arXiv…

E. Gorbovskoy, V. Lipunov, D. Buckley, et. al.
Tue, 10 Nov 15
7/62

Comments: accepted, MNRAS, 2015