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A "kilonova" associated with short-duration gamma-ray burst 130603B

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arxiv 1306.4971 v2 pith:YE5U3DWV submitted 2013-06-20 astro-ph.HE

classification astro-ph.HE
keywords kilonovar-processburstcompactconfirmationcreatedelementsevidence
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

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Short-duration gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) are intense flashes of cosmic gamma-rays, lasting less than ~2 s, whose origin is one of the great unsolved questions of astrophysics today. While the favoured hypothesis for their production, a relativistic jet created by the merger of two compact stellar objects (specifically, two neutron stars, NS-NS, or a neutron star and a black hole, NS-BH), is supported by indirect evidence such as their host galaxy properties, unambiguous confirmation of the model is still lacking. Mergers of this kind are also expected to create significant quantities of neutron-rich radioactive species, whose decay should result in a faint transient in the days following the burst, a so-called "kilonova". Indeed, it is speculated that this mechanism may be the predominant source of stable r-process elements in the Universe. Recent calculations suggest much of the kilonova energy should appear in the near-infrared (nIR) due to the high optical opacity created by these heavy r-process elements. Here we report strong evidence for such an event accompanying SGRB 130603B. If this simplest interpretation of the data is correct, it provides (i) support for the compact object merger hypothesis of SGRBs, (ii) confirmation that such mergers are likely sites of significant r-process production and (iii) quite possibly an alternative, un-beamed electromagnetic signature of the most promising sources for direct detection of gravitational waves.

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Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Discovery of 27 new Rotating Radio Transients by MeerTRAP

    astro-ph.HE 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    MeerTRAP discovers 27 new rotating radio transients in the Galaxy, localizes 14 of them, and obtains coherent timing solutions for 4.

  2. Prospect for Detection of Strongly Lensed Multi-messenger Signals of Binary Neutron Star Mergers

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Future CE+ET detectors may detect lensed BNS kilonovae at ~0.5/yr via pointed follow-up of known galaxy lenses, while lensed sGRBs and afterglows remain rare or undetectable with current-generation facilities.

  3. Binary Neutron Star Mergers as Potential Sources for Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays and High-Energy Neutrinos

    astro-ph.HE 2025-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Short gamma-ray burst prompt jets with Lorentz factors above roughly 400 to 500 can in principle accelerate and preserve r-process nuclei to 100 EeV, and the same survival requirement caps their high-energy neutrino output.

  4. Early Optical Follow-up of Gamma-Ray Bursts: The Critical Role of Robotic Telescopes

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 2.0 of 10

    A review of early optical GRB features including prompt emission, reverse shocks, and afterglow onset, highlighting robotic telescopes' role in constraining jet Lorentz factors and magnetization.

  5. Gamma-ray bursts: what do we know today that we did not know 10 years ago?

    astro-ph.HE 2024-12 unverdicted

    A review of the past decade of gamma-ray burst research, highlighting structured jets, GR-MHD simulations, TeV detections, and the contested idea that many GRBs have moderate Lorentz factors.

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