Suchergebnisse

The hosts of long duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are predominantly starburst galaxies at subsolar metallicity. At redshifts z < 1, this implies that most of them are low-mass galaxies similar to the populations of blue compact dwarfs and dwarf irregulars. What triggers the massive star-formation needed for producing a GRB progenitor is still largely unknown, as are the resolved gas properties and kinematics of these galaxies and their formation history. Here we present a sample of six spatially resolved GRB hosts at z < 0.3 observed with 3D spectroscopy at high spectral resolution (R = 8000-13 000) using FLAMES/VLT. We analyzed the resolved gas kinematics of the full sample and the abundances in a subsample with strong enough emission lines. Only two galaxies show a regular disk-like rotation field, another two are dispersion-dominated, and the remaining ones have two narrow emission components associated with different parts of the galaxy but no regular rotation field, which might indicate a recent merger. All galaxies show evidence for broad components underlying the main emission peak with σ of 50-110 km s-1. This broad component is more metal-rich than the narrow components, it is blueshifted in most cases, and it follows a different velocity structure. We find a weak correlation between the star-formation rate and the width of the broad component, its flux compared to the narrow component, and the maximum outflow velocity of the gas, but we do not find any correlation with the star-formation density, metallicity or stellar mass. We hence associate this broad component with a metal-rich outflow from star-forming regions in the host. The GRB is not located in the brightest region of the host, but is always associated with some star-forming region showing a clear wind component. Our study shows the great potential of 3D spectroscopy to study the star-formation processes and history in galaxies hosting extreme transients, the need for high signal-To-noise, and the perils using unresolved or only partially resolved data for these kinds of studies. © ESO 2021. ; CT and AdUP acknowledge support from AYA2017-89384-P, CT and AdUP also from a Ramón y Cajal fellowships RyC-2012-09984 and RyC-2012-09975, LI from a Juan de la Cierva Integración fellowship IJCI-2016-30940. DAK acknowledges support from the Spanish National Research Project RTI2018-098104-J-I00 (GRBPhot). JFAF acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades through the grant PRE2018-086507. SDV acknowledges support from the French National Research Agency (ANR) under contract ANR-16-CE31-0003. LC is supported by YDUN grant DFF 4090-00079. Ground based observations were collected at the VLT under program 092.D-0389(A). ; With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709. ; Peer reviewed

We present here a survey of high-ionization absorption lines in the afterglow spectra of longduration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) obtained with the VLT/X-shooter spectrograph. Our main goal is to investigate the circumburst medium in the natal regions of GRBs. Our primary focus is on the Nλλ 1238, 1242 line transitions, but we also discuss other high-ionization lines such as OVI, CIV, and SiIV. We find no correlation between the column density of N and the neutral gas properties such as metallicity, H column density, and dust depletion; however, the relative velocity of N, typically a blueshift with respect to the neutral gas, is found to be correlated with the column density of H. This may be explained if the N gas is part of an H region hosting the GRB, where the region's expansion is confined by dense, neutral gas in the GRB's host galaxy. We find tentative evidence (at 2σ significance) that the X-ray derived column density, N, may be correlated with the column density of N, which would indicate that both measurements are sensitive to the column density of the gas located in the vicinity of the GRB. We investigate the scenario where N (and also O) is produced by recombination after the corresponding atoms have been stripped entirely of their electrons by the initial prompt emission, in contrast to previous models where highly ionized gas is produced by photoionization from the GRB afterglow.© 2018 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. ; We would like to thank the referee for a clear and thorough report, which greatly improved the presentation of the results in the paper. We also wish to thank K. Wiersema and P. Moller for enlightening discussions. KEH and PJ acknowledge support by a Project Grant (162948-051) from The Icelandic Research Fund. JK acknowledges financial support from the Danish Council for Independent Research (EU-FP7 under the Marie-Curie grant agreement no. 600207) with reference DFF-MOBILEX-5051-00115. JJ acknowledges support from NOVA and NWO-FAPESP grant for advanced instrumentation in astronomy. AG acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding no. P1-0031 and project grant no. J1-8136). AdUP, CCT, and ZC acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity under grant number AYA 2014-58381-P. AdUP and CCT acknowledge support from Ramon y Cajal fellowships (RyC-2012-09975 and RyC-2012-09984). AdUP acknowledges support from a grant from the BBVA foundation for researchers and cultural creators. ZC acknowledges support from the Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowship IJCI-2014-21669 and from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P. RS-R acknowledges support from ASI (Italian Space Agency) through the contract no. 2015-046-R.0 and from European Union Horizon 2020 Programme under the AHEAD project (grant agreement no. 654215).

Publisher's version (útgefin grein) ; We present here a survey of high-ionization absorption lines in the afterglow spectra of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) obtained with the VLT/X-shooter spectrograph. Our main goal is to investigate the circumburst medium in the natal regions of GRBs. Our primary focus is on the N Vλλ 1238, 1242 line transitions, but we also discuss other high-ionization lines such as O VI, C IV, and Si IV. We find no correlation between the column density of N V and the neutral gas properties such as metallicity, H I column density, and dust depletion; however, the relative velocity of N V, typically a blueshift with respect to the neutral gas, is found to be correlated with the column density of H I. This may be explained if the N V gas is part of an H II region hosting the GRB, where the region's expansion is confined by dense, neutral gas in the GRB's host galaxy. We find tentative evidence (at 2σ significance) that the X-ray derived column density, NH, X, may be correlated with the column density of N V, which would indicate that both measurements are sensitive to the column density of the gas located in the vicinity of the GRB. We investigate the scenario where N V (and also O VI) is produced by recombination after the corresponding atoms have been stripped entirely of their electrons by the initial prompt emission, in contrast to previous models where highly ionized gas is produced by photoionization from the GRB afterglow. ; KEH and PJ acknowledge support by a Project Grant (162948–051) from The Icelandic Research Fund. JK acknowledges financial support from the Danish Council for Independent Research (EU-FP7 under the Marie-Curie grant agreement no. 600207) with reference DFF–MOBILEX–5051–00115. JJ acknowledges support from NOVA and NWO-FAPESP grant for advanced instrumentation in astronomy. AG acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding no. P1-0031 and project grant no. J1-8136). AdUP, CCT, and ZC acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity under grant number AYA 2014-58381-P. AdUP and CCT acknowledge support from Ramon y Cajal fellowships (RyC-2012-09975 and RyC-2012-09984). AdUP acknowledges support from a grant from the BBVA foundation for researchers and cultural creators. ZC acknowledges support from the Juan de la Cierva Incorporación fellowship IJCI-2014-21669 and from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P. RS-R acknowledges support from ASI (Italian Space Agency) through the contract no. 2015-046-R.0 and from European Union Horizon 2020 Programme under the AHEAD project (grant agreement no. 654215). ; Peer Reviewed

We present a comprehensive study of the relations between gas kinematics, metallicity and stellar mass in a sample of 82 gamma-ray burst (GRB)-selected galaxies using absorption and emission methods. We find the velocity widths of both emission and absorption profiles to be a proxy of stellar mass. We also investigate the velocity-metallicity correlation and its evolution with redshift. Using 33 GRB hosts with measured stellar mass and metallicity, we study the mass-metallicity relation for GRB host galaxies in a stellarmass range of 10-10M and a redshift range of z~0.3-3.4. TheGRB-selected galaxies appear to track themass-metallicity relation of star-forming galaxies but with an offset of 0.15 towards lower metallicities. This offset is comparable with the average error bar on the metallicity measurements of the GRB sample and also the scatter on the mass-metallicity relation of the general population. It is hard to decide whether this relatively small offset is due to systematic effects or the intrinsic nature of GRB hosts. We also investigate the possibility of using absorption-line metallicity measurements of GRB hosts to study the mass-metallicity relation at high redshifts. Our analysis shows that the metallicity measurements from absorption methods can significantly differ from emission metallicities and assuming identical measurements from the two methods may result in erroneous conclusions.© 2018 The Author(s). ; MA would like to specially thank Thomas Kruhler for very helpful discussions and also for providing stellar mass measurement prior to publication. MA also thanks Roberto Maiolino, Richard Ellis, Sambit Roychowdhury, Claudia Lagos, Jens Hjorth and Bernd Husemann for helpful discussions. We acknowledge the financial support from UnivEarthS Labex programme at Sorbonne Paris Cite (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant agreement no. EGGS-278202. AdUP acknowledges support from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P, a Ramon y Cajal fellowship and a 2016 BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators.

We here present the spectroscopic follow-up observations with VLT/X-shooter of the Swift long-duration gamma-ray burst GRB160804A at z=0.737. Typically, GRBs are found in lowmass, metal-poor galaxies that constitute the sub-luminous population of star-forming galaxies. For the host galaxy of the GRB presented here, we derive a stellar mass of log (M*/M) = 9.80 ± 0.07, a roughly solar metallicity (12 + log (O/H) = 8.74 ± 0.12) based on emission line diagnostics, and an infrared luminosity of M = -21.94 mag, but find it to be dust-poor (E(B - V) < 0.05 mag). This establishes the galaxy hosting GRB160804A as one of the most luminous, massive and metal-rich GRB hosts at z < 1.5. Furthermore, the gasphase metallicity is found to be representative of the physical conditions of the gas close to the explosion site of the burst. The high metallicity of the host galaxy is also observed in absorption, where we detect several strong Fe II transitions as well as MgII and MgI. Although host galaxy absorption features are common in GRB afterglow spectra, we detect absorption from strong metal lines directly in the host continuum (at a time when the afterglow was contributing to < 15 per cent). Finally, we discuss the possibility that the geometry and state of the absorbing and emitting gas are indicative of a galactic scale outflow expelled at the final stage of two merging galaxies.© 2018 The Author(s). ; We would like to thank the anonymous referee for a constructive report provided in a timely manner. KEH and PJ acknowledge support by a Project Grant (162948-051) from The Icelandic Research Fund. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant agreement no. EGGS-278202. AUP, CCT and ZC acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity under grant number AYA 2014-58381-P. AUP and CCT acknowledge support from Ramon y Cajal fellowships (RyC-2012-09975 and RyC-2012-09984). AUP acknowledges support from a grant from the BBVA foundation for researchers and cultural creators. ZC acknowledges support from the Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowship IJCI-2014-21669 and from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P. This research was based on observations carried out under the programme ID 097.A-0036 (PI: J. Fynbo) with the X-shooter spectrograph mounted at the Cassegrain Very Large Telescope (VLT), Unit 2 - Kueyen, operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Cerro Paranal, Chile; and on observations made with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Fundacion Galileo Galilei of the INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias under program A32TAC_5 (PI: D'Elia).

It is notoriously difficult to localize short γ-ray bursts (sGRBs) and their hosts to measure their redshifts. These measurements, however, are critical for constraining the nature of sGRB progenitors, their redshift distribution, and the r-process element enrichment history of the universe. Here we present spectroscopy of the host galaxy of GRB 111117A and measure its redshift to be z = 2.211. This makes GRB 111117A the most distant high-confidence short duration GRB detected to date. Our spectroscopic redshift supersedes a lower, previously estimated photometric redshift value for this burst. We use the spectroscopic redshift, as well as new imaging data to constrain the nature of the host galaxy and the physical parameters of the GRB. The rest-frame X-ray derived hydrogen column density, for example, is the highest compared to a complete sample of sGRBs and seems to follow the evolution with redshift as traced by the hosts of long GRBs. From the detection of Lyα emission in the spectrum, we are able to constrain the escape fraction of Lyα in the host. The host lies in the brighter end of the expected sGRB host brightness distribution at z = 2.211, and is actively forming stars. Using the observed sGRB host luminosity distribution, we find that between 43% and 71% of all Swift-detected sGRBs have hosts that are too faint at z ∼ 2 to allow for a secure redshift determination. This implies that the measured sGRB redshift distribution could be incomplete at high redshift. The high z of GRB 111117A is evidence against a lognormal delay-time model for sGRBs through the predicted redshift distribution of sGRBs, which is very sensitive to high-z sGRBs. From the age of the universe at the time of GRB explosion, an initial neutron star (NS) separation of a < 3.1 R is required in the case where the progenitor system is a circular pair of inspiralling NSs. This constraint excludes some of the longest sGRB formation channels for this burst.© 2018 ESO. ; We thank the anonymous referee for the constructive report. We thank Jens Hjorth and Lise Christensen for useful discussions regarding the interpretation of this event. We thank Mathieu Puech for testing the possible contribution from an older stellar population in the SED. We thank Peter Laursen for fruitful discussions regarding the Ly alpha escape fraction. TK acknowledges support through the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award to P. Schady. SDV is supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) under contract ANR-16-CE31-0003 BEaPro. PDA and SCo acknowledge support from ASI grant I/004/11/3. JJ acknowledges support from NOVA and a NWO-FAPESP grant for advanced instrumentation in astronomy. NRT and KW acknowledge support from STFC Consolidated Grant ST/N000757/1. CT acknowledges support from a Spanish National Research Grant of Excellence under project AYA 2014-58381-P and funding associated with a Ramon y Cajal fellowship under grant number RyC-2012-09984. AdUP acknowledges support from a Ramon y Cajal fellowship, a BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators, and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through project AYA2014-58381-P. ZC acknowledges support from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P and support from Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowships IJCI-2014-21669. RSR acknowledges AdUP's BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators and support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) through Contract n. 2015-046-R.0 and from the European Union Horizon 2020 Programme under the AHEAD project (grant agreement n. 654215). This research made use of Astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013). The analysis and plotting was achieved using the Python-based packages Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), Numpy, and Scipy (van der Walt et al. 2011), along with other community-developed packages. This work made use of observations obtained with the Italian 3.6m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Fundacion Galileo Galilei of the INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. Based on data from the GTC Archive at CAB (INTA-CSIC) and on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion Productiva (Argentina), and Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao (Brazil).

The binary neutron star merger event GW170817 was detected through both electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves. Its afterglow emission may have been produced by either a narrow relativistic jet or an isotropic outflow. High-spatial-resolution measurements of the source size and displacement can discriminate between these scenarios. We present very-long-baseline interferometry observations, performed 207.4 days after the merger by using a global network of 32 radio telescopes. The apparent source size is constrained to be smaller than 2.5 milli-arc seconds at the 90% confidence level. This excludes the isotropic outflow scenario, which would have produced a larger apparent size, indicating that GW170817 produced a structured relativistic jet. Our rate calculations show that at least 10% of neutron star mergers produce such a jet.© 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved. All rights reserved. ; The National Institute of Astrophysics is is acknowledged for PRIN-grant (2017) 1.05.01.88.06. The Italian Ministry for University and Research (MIUR) is acknowledged through the project >FIGARO> (Prin-MIUR) grant 1.05.06.13. ASI is acknowledged for grant I/004/11/3. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement 730562 (RadioNet). The Spanish Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad (MINECO) is acknowledged for financial support under grants AYA201676012-C3-1-P, FPA2015-69210-C6-2-R, and MDM-2014-0369 of ICCUB (Unidad de Excelencia >Mara de Maeztu>). M.A.P.-T. acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO through grants AYA2012-38491-C02-02 and AYA2015-63939-C2-1-P.T.A. is supported by the National Key R&D Programme of China (2018YFA0404603). E.C.-M. acknowledges support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 653477. S.F. thanks the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (OTKA NN110333) for support. The Long Baseline Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. ; Peer Reviewed

Context. Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) give us the chance to study both their extreme physics and the star-forming galaxies in which they form. Aims. GRB 100418A, at a redshift of z = 0.6239, had a bright optical and radio afterglow, and a luminous star-forming host galaxy. This allowed us to study the radiation of the explosion as well as the interstellar medium of the host both in absorption and emission. Methods. We collected photometric data from radio to X-ray wavelengths to study the evolution of the afterglow and the contribution of a possible supernova (SN) and three X-shooter spectra obtained during the first 60 h. Results. The light curve shows a very fast gamma-ray burst: individual: GRB100418A; supernovae: individual: GRB100418A; galaxies: dwarf; ISM: abundances; ISM: kinematics and dynamicsoptical rebrightening, with an amplitude of ∼3 magnitudes, starting 2.4 h after the GRB onset. This cannot be explained by a standard external shock model and requires other contributions, such as late central-engine activity. Two weeks after the burst we detect an excess in the light curve consistent with a SN with peak absolute magnitude M = -18.5 mag, among the faintest GRB-SNe detected to date. The host galaxy shows two components in emission, with velocities differing by 130 km s, but otherwise having similar properties. While some absorption and emission components coincide, the absorbing gas spans much higher velocities, indicating the presence of gas beyond the star-forming regions. The host has a star formation rate of SFR = 12.2 M yr, a metallicity of 12 + log(O/H) = 8.55, and a mass of 1.6⊙ ×⊙ 10 M. Conclusions. GRB 100418A is a member of a class of afterglow light curves which show a steep rebrightening in the optical during the first day, which cannot be explained by traditional models. Its very faint associated SN shows that GRB-SNe can have a larger dispersion in luminosities than previously seen. Furthermore, we have obtained a complete view of the host of GRB 100418A owing to its spectrum, which contains a remarkable number of both emission and absorption lines.© ESO 2018. ; AdUP, CCT, KB, DAK, LI, and ZC acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity under grant number AYA 2014-58381-P; in addition, AdUP and CCT from Ramon y Cajal fellowships (RyC-2012-09975 and RyC-2012-09984). DAK also acknowledges financial support from Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowship IJCI-2015-26153. RF acknowledges support from European Regional Development Fund-Project >Engineering applications of microworld physics> (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000766). IB, IKh, RB, and SM acknowledge TUBITAK, IKI, KFU, and AST for partial support in using RTT150. This work was partially funded by the subsidy 3.6714.2017/8.9 allocated to Kazan Federal University for the state assignment in the sphere of scientific activities. TK acknowledges support from the DFG cluster of excellence >Origin and Structure of the Universe>. PS acknowledges support through the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany. RSR acknwoledges support from ASI (Italian Space Agency) through Contract n. 2015-046-R.0 and from European Union Horizon 2020 Programme under the AHEAD project (grant agreement n. 654215). The Cosmic Dawn Center is funded by the DNRF. Based on observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), installed in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, in the island of La Palma. The Submillimeter Array is a joint project between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. This work is based on observations carried out under project number U051 with the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany), and IGN (Spain). Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. The UKIRT data were pipeline processed at the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit, and are archived at the Wide Field Astronomy Unit at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh This work made use of data supplied by the UK Swift Science Data Centre at the University of Leicester.

Whether stars could have driven the reionization of the intergalactic medium depends critically on the proportion of ionizing radiation that escapes the galaxies in which it is produced. Spectroscopy of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows can be used to estimate the opacity to extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation along the lines-of-sight to the bursts. Assuming that long-duration GRBs trace the locations of the massive stars dominating EUV production, the average escape fraction of ionizing radiation can be calculated independently of galaxy size or luminosity. Here we present a compilation of H i column density (N HI ) measures for 140 GRBs in the range 1.6 < z < 6.7. Although the sample is heterogeneous, in terms of spectral resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, fits to the Ly α absorption line provide robust constraints on N HI , even for spectra of insufficient quality for other purposes. Thus we establish an escape fraction at the Lyman limit of (f esc ) ≈ 0.005, with a 98 per cent confidence upper limit of (f esc ) ≈ 0.015. This analysis suggests that stars provide a small contribution to the ionizing radiation budget at z < 5. At higher redshifts firm conclusions are limited by the small size of the GRB sample (7/140), but any decline in average H i column density seems to be modest. We also find no significant correlation of N HI with galaxy UV luminosity or host stellar mass. We discuss in some detail potential biases and argue that, while not negligible, systematic errors in f esc are unlikely to be more than a factor ~2 in either direction, and so would not affect the primary conclusions. Given that many GRB hosts are low-metallicity dwarf galaxies with high specific star-formation rates, these results present a particular problem for the hypothesis that such galaxies dominated the reionization of the Universe. © 2018 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. ; JJ acknowledges support from Nederlandse Onderzoekschool Voor Astronomie(NOVA) and The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) - The Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant for advanced instrumentation in astronomy. KEH acknowledges support by a Project Grant (162948-051) from The Icelandic Research Fund. DAK acknowledges support from the Spanish research project AYA2014-58381-P and Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion IJCI-2015-26153. AJL and ERS acknowledge Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) consolidated grant ST/L000733/1. NRT and KW acknowledge Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) consolidated grant ST/N000757/1. AC acknowledges National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grant NNX15AP95A. AdUP acknowledges support from a Ramon y Cajal fellowship (RyC-2012-09975), a 2016 Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators, and from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P. RC acknowledges partial support from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Swift grant NNX16AB04G.This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 725246). ; Peer Reviewed

In this work we present spectra of all γ-ray burst (GRB) afterglows that have been promptly observed with the X-shooter spectrograph until 31/03/2017. In total, we have obtained spectroscopic observations of 103 individual GRBs observed within 48 hours of the GRB trigger. Redshifts have been measured for 97 per cent of these, covering a redshift range from 0.059 to 7.84. Based on a set of observational selection criteria that minimise biases with regards to intrinsic properties of the GRBs, the follow-up effort has been focused on producing a homogeneously selected sample of 93 afterglow spectra for GRBs discovered by the Swift satellite. We here provide a public release of all the reduced spectra, including continuum estimates and telluric absorption corrections. For completeness, we also provide reductions for the 18 late-time observations of the underlying host galaxies. We provide an assessment of the degree of completeness with respect to the parent GRB population, in terms of the X-ray properties of the bursts in the sample and find that the sample presented here is representative of the full Swift sample. We have constrained the fraction of dark bursts to be <28 per cent and confirm previous results that higher optical darkness is correlated with increased X-ray absorption. For the 42 bursts for which it is possible, we have provided a measurement of the neutral hydrogen column density, increasing the total number of published HI column density measurements by ∼33 per cent. This dataset provides a unique resource to study the ISM across cosmic time, from the local progenitor surroundings to the intervening Universe.© ESO 2019. ; JPUF, BMJ and DX acknowledge support from the ERC-StG grant EGGS-278202. The Dark Cosmology Centre was funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. This work was supported by a VILLUM FONDEN Investigator grant to JH (project number 16599). TK acknowledges support by the European Commission under the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship Programme in FP7. LK and JJ acknowledges support from NOVA and NWO-FAPESP grant for advanced instrumentation in astronomy. KEH and PJ acknowledge support by a Project Grant (162948-051) from The Icelandic Research Fund. AG acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P1-0031 and project grant No. J1-8136). CT acknowledges support from a Spanish National Research Grant of Excellence under project AYA 2014-58381-P and funding associated to a Ramon y Cajal fellowship under grant number RyC-2012-09984. AdUP acknowledges support from a Ramon y Cajal fellowship, a BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators, and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through project AYA2014-58381-P. ZC acknowledges support from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P and support from Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowships IJCI-2014-21669. DAK acknowledges support from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P and support from Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowships IJCI-2015-26153. RSR acknowledges AdUP's BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators and support from ASI (Italian Space Agency) through the Contract n. 2015-046-R.0 and from European Union Horizon 2020 Programme under the AHEAD project (grant agreement n. 654215). GL is supported by a research grant (19054) from VILLUM FONDEN. SDV acknowledges the support of the French National Research Agency (ANR) under contract ANR-16-CE31-0003 BEaPro DM acknowledges support from the Instrument Center for Danish Astrophysics (IDA). ; Peer Reviewed

Context. Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are produced during the dramatic deaths of massive stars with very short lifetimes, meaning that they explode close to the birth place of their progenitors. Over a short period they become the most luminous objects observable in the Universe, being perfect beacons to study high-redshift star-forming regions. Aims. We aim to use the afterglow of GRB 161023A at a redshift z = 2.710 as a background source to study the environment of the explosion and the intervening systems along its line of sight. Methods. For the first time, we complement ultraviolet (UV), optical and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy with millimetre spectroscopy using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), which allows us to probe the molecular content of the host galaxy. The X-shooter spectrum shows a plethora of absorption features including fine-structure and metastable transitions of Fe, Ni, Si, C, and O. We present photometry ranging from 43 s to over 500 days after the burst. Results. We infer a host-galaxy metallicity of [Zn/H] = -1.11 ± 0.07, which, corrected for dust depletion, results in [X/H] = -0.94 ± 0.08. We do not detect molecular features in the ALMA data, but we derive limits on the molecular content of log(N/cm) < 15.7 and log(N/cm, which are consistent with those that we obtain from the optical spectra, log(N/cm)< 15.2 and log(N/cm) < 14.5. Within the host galaxy, we detect three velocity systems through UV, optical and NIR absorption spectroscopy, all with levels that were excited by the GRB afterglow. We determine the distance from these systems to the GRB to be in the range between 0.7 and 1.0 kpc. The sight line to GRB 161023A shows nine independent intervening systems, most of them with multiple components. Conclusions. Although no molecular absorption was detected for GRB 161023A, we show that GRB millimetre spectroscopy is now feasible and is opening a new window on the study of molecular gas within star-forming galaxies at all redshifts. The most favoured lines of sight for this purpose will be those with high metallicity and dust.© ESO 2018. ; AdUP and CT acknowledge support from Ramon y Cajal fellowships RyC-2012-09975 and RyC-2012-09984 and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through projects AYA2014-58381-P and AYA2017-89384-P, AdUP furthermore from the BBVA foundation. DAK acknowledges support from the Spanish research project AYA 2014-58381-P, and from Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowship IJCI-2015-26153. FEB acknowledges support from CONICYT-Chile (Basal-CATA PFB-06/2007) and the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism's Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009, awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, MAS. Part of the funding for GROND (both hardware as well as personnel) was generously granted from the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G. Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1). JB acknowledges support through the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award to P. Schady from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany. MJM acknowledges the support of the National Science Centre, Poland through the POLONEZ grant 2015/19/P/ST9/04010; this project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 665778. AG acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P1-0031 and project grant No. J1-8136) and networking support by the COST Action GWverse CA16104. Based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programmes 098.A-0055, 098.D-0710 and 0100.D-0649. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2016.1.00862. T. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada) and NSC and ASIAA (Taiwan) and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech.

We report the discovery and monitoring of the near-infrared counterpart (AT2017gfo) of a binary neutron-star merger event detected as a gravitational wave source by Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)/Virgo (GW170817) and as a short gamma-ray burst by Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Integral SPI-ACS (GRB 170817A). The evolution of the transient light is consistent with predictions for the behavior of a "kilonova/macronova" powered by the radioactive decay of massive neutron-rich nuclides created via r-process nucleosynthesis in the neutron-star ejecta. In particular, evidence for this scenario is found from broad features seen in Hubble Space Telescope infrared spectroscopy, similar to those predicted for lanthanide-dominated ejecta, and the much slower evolution in the near-infrared ${K}_{{\rm{s}}}$-band compared to the optical. This indicates that the late-time light is dominated by high-opacity lanthanide-rich ejecta, suggesting nucleosynthesis to the third r-process peak (atomic masses $A\approx 195$). This discovery confirms that neutron-star mergers produce kilo-/macronovae and that they are at least a major—if not the dominant—site of rapid neutron capture nucleosynthesis in the universe. ; HST observations were obtained using programs GO 14771 (PI: Tanvir), GO 14804 (PI: Levan), and GO 14850 (PI: Troja). VLT observations were obtained using programs 099.D-0688, 099.D-0116, and 099.D-0622. N.R.T., K.W., P.T.O., J.L.O., and S.R. acknowledge support from STFC. A.J.L., D.S., and J.D.L. acknowledge support from STFC via grant ST/P000495/1. N.R.T. and A.J.L. have received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement No. 725246, TEDE, Levan). Ad.U.P., C.T., Z.C., and D.A.K. acknowledge support from the Spanish project AYA 2014-58381-P. Z.C. also acknowledges support from the Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowship IJCI-2014-21669, and D.A.K. from Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion fellowship IJCI-2015-26153. J.H. is supported by a VILLUM FONDEN Investigator grant (project number 16599). P.D.A., S.C., and A.M. acknowledge support from the ASI grant I/004/11/3. S.R. has been supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR) under grant No. 2016-03657_3, by the Swedish National Space Board under grant No. Dnr. 107/16, and by the research environment grant "Gravitational Radiation and Electromagnetic Astrophysical Transients (GREAT)" funded by the Swedish Research council (VR) under Dnr 2016-06012. P.A.E. acknowledges UKSA support. The VISTA observations were processed by C.G.F. at the Cambridge Astronomy Survey Unit (CASU), which is funded by the UK Science and Technology Research Council under grant ST/N005805/1. This research used resources provided by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Institutional Computing Program, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396. Based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope (program 55-013, PI Pian), operated by the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. ; Peer Reviewed

The mechanisms producing fast variability of the γ-ray emission in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are under debate. The MAGIC telescopes detected a fast, very-high-energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) γ-ray flare from BL Lacertae on 2015 June 15. The flare had a maximum flux of (1.5 ± 0.3) × 10-10 photons cm-2 s-1 and halving time of 26 ± 8 min. The MAGIC observations were triggered by a high state in the optical and high-energy (HE, E > 100 MeV) γ-ray bands. In this paper we present the MAGIC VHE γ-ray data together with multi-wavelength data from radio, optical, X-rays, and HE γ rays from 2015 May 1 to July 31. Well-sampled multi-wavelength data allow us to study the variability in detail and compare it to the other epochs when fast, VHE γ-ray flares have been detected from this source. Interestingly, we find that the behaviour in radio, optical, X-rays, and HE γ-rays is very similar to two other observed VHE γ-ray flares. In particular, also during this flare there was an indication of rotation of the optical polarization angle and of activity at the 43 GHz core. These repeating patterns indicate a connection between the three events. We also test modelling of the spectral energy distribution based on constraints from the light curves and VLBA observations, with two different geometrical setups of two-zone inverse Compton models. In addition we model the γ-ray data with the star-jet interaction model. We find that all of the tested emission models are compatible with the fast VHE γ-ray flare, but all have some tension with the multi-wavelength observations. © ESO 2019. ; The financial support of the German BMBF and MPG, the Italian INFN and INAF, the Swiss National Fund SNF, the ERDF under the Spanish MINECO (FPA2015-69818-P, FPA2012-36668, FPA 2015-68378-P, FPA2015-69210-C6-2-R, FPA2015-69210-C6-4-R, FPA201569210-C6-6-R, AYA2015-71042-P, AYA2016-76012-C3-1-P, ESP2015-71662C2-2-P, FPA201790566REDC), the Indian Department of Atomic Energy and the Japanese JSPS and MEXT is gratefully acknowledged. This work was also supported by the Spanish Centro de Excelencia >Severo Ochoa> SEV-2016-0588 and SEV-2015-0548, and Unidad de Excelencia >Maria de Maeztu> MDM-20140369, by the Croatian Science Foundation (HrZZ) Project IP-2016-06-9782 and the University of Rijeka Project 13.12.1.3.02, by the DFG Collaborative Research Centers SFB823/C4 and SFB876/C3, the Polish National Research Centre grant UMO-2016/22/M/ST9/00382 and by the Brazilian MCTIC, CNPq and FAPERJ. The work of the author M. Vazquez Acosta is financed with grant RYC-2013-14660 of MINECO. F. D'Ammando is grateful for support from the National Research Council of Science and Technology, Korea (EU16-001). The Fermi-LAT Collaboration acknowledges generous ongoing support from a number of agencies and institutes that have supported both the development and the operation of the LAT as well as scientific data analysis. These include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy in the United States, the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules in France, the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Italy, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Japan, and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish National Space Board in Sweden. Additional support for science analysis during the operations phase is gratefully acknowledged from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales in France. This work performed in part under DOE Contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. Based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated by the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. ; Acquisition and reduction of the MAPCAT data was supported in part by MINECO through grants AYA201014844, AYA2013-40825-P, and AYA2016-80889-P, and by the Regional Government of Andalucia through grant P09-FQM-4784. The MAPCAT observations were carried out at the German-Spanish Calar Alto Observatory, which is jointly operated by the Max-Plank-Institut fur Astronomie and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia-CSIC. The St. Petersburg University team acknowledges support from Russian Science Foundation grant 17-12-01029. This publication makes use of data obtained at the Metsahovi Radio Observatory, operated by Aalto University, Finland. This study makes use of 43-GHz VLBA data from the VLBA-BU Blazar Monitoring Program (VLBA-BUBLAZAR; http://www.bu.edu/blazars/VLBAproject.html), funded by NASA through the Fermi Guest Investigator Program. The VLBA is an instrument of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated by Associated Universities, Inc. The BU group acknowledges support from NASA Fermi GI program grant 80NSSC17K0694 and US National Science Foundation grant AST-1615796. The OVRO 40-m monitoring program is supported in part by NASA grants NNX08AW31G, NNX11A043G and NNX14AQ89G, and NSF grants AST-0808050 and AST-1109911. ; Peer Reviewed

The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above. ; THESEUS is a space mission concept aimed at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics. These goals will be achieved through a unique combination of instruments allowing GRB and X-ray transient detection over a broad field of view (more than 1sr) with 0.5–1 arcmin localization, an energy band extending from several MeV down to 0.3 keV and high sensitivity to transient sources in the soft X-ray domain, as well as on-board prompt (few minutes) follow-up with a 0.7 m class IR telescope with both imaging and spectroscopic capabilities. THESEUS will be perfectly suited for addressing the main open issues in cosmology such as, e.g., star formation rate and metallicity evolution of the inter-stellar and intra-galactic medium up to redshift ∼10, signatures of Pop III stars, sources and physics of re-ionization, and the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function. In addition, it will provide unprecedented capability to monitor the X-ray variable sky, thus detecting, localizing, and identifying the electromagnetic counterparts to sources of gravitational radiation, which may be routinely detected in the late '20s/early '30s by next generation facilities like aLIGO/ aVirgo, eLISA, KAGRA, and Einstein Telescope. THESEUS will also provide powerful synergies with the next generation of multi-wavelength observatories (e.g., LSST, ELT, SKA, CTA, ATHENA). ; S.E. acknowledges the financial support from contracts ASI-INAF I/009/10/0, NARO15 ASI-INAF I/037/12/0 and ASI 2015-046-R.0. R.H. acknowledges GACR grant 13-33324S. S.V. research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 606176. D.S. was supported by the Czech grant 16-01116S GA ČR. Maria Giovanna Dainotti acknowledges funding from the European Union through the Marie Curie Action FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF, under grant agreement No. 626267 ("Cosmological Candles"). ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print