University of Leicester
Browse
- No file added yet -

Probing cosmic chemical evolution with gamma-ray bursts: GRB 060206 at z = 4.048

Download (209.3 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2012-10-24, 09:07 authored by J. P. U. Fynbo, C. C. Thöne, J. Sollerman, P. Jakobsson, J. Hjorth, D. Watson, Castro Cerón JM, B. L. Jensen, M. Limousin, K. Pedersen, R. L. C. Starling, K. Wiersema, R. A. M. J. Wijers, P. Curran, C. Ledoux, P. M. Vreeswijk, P. Møller, E. Rol, J. Gorosabel, J. Näränen, G. Björnsson, D. H. Hartmann, S. T. Holland, A. J. Levan, R. S. Priddey, N. R. Tanvir, C. Kouveliotou, G. Nelemans
Aims.We present early optical spectroscopy of the afterglow of the gamma-ray burst GRB 060206 with the aim of determining the metallicity of the GRB absorber and the physical conditions in the circumburst medium. We also discuss how GRBs may be important complementary probes of cosmic chemical evolution. Methods.Absorption line study of the GRB afterglow spectrum. Results.We determine the redshift of the GRB to be $z=4.04795\pm0.00020$. Based on the measurement of the neutral hydrogen column density from the damped Lyman-$\alpha$ line and the metal content from weak, unsaturated $\ion{S}{ii}$ lines we derive a metallicity of $\rm [S/H]=-0.84\pm0.10$. This is one of the highest metallicities measured from absorption lines at $z\sim4$. From the very high column densities for the forbidden $\ion{Si}{ii}$*, $\ion{O}{i}$*, and $\ion{O}{i}$** lines we infer very high densities and low temperatures in the system. There is evidence for the presence of H2 molecules with log $N({\rm H}_2)\sim17.0$, translating into a molecular fraction of $\log{f}\approx -3.5$ with f=2N(H2)/(2N(H2) + $N(\ion{H}{i})$). Even if GRBs are only formed by single massive stars with metallicities below ${\sim}0.3~Z_{\odot}$, they could still be fairly unbiased tracers of the bulk of the star formation at z>2. Hence, metallicities as derived for GRB 060206 here for a complete sample of GRB afterglows will directly show the distribution of metallicities for representative star-forming galaxies at these redshifts.

History

Citation

Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2006, 451 (3)

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Publisher

EDP Sciences for European Southern Observatory (ESO)

issn

0004-6361

eissn

1432-0746

Copyright date

2006

Available date

2012-10-24

Publisher version

http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2006/21/aa5056-06/aa5056-06.html

Language

en

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Keywords

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC