The IXPE View of GRB 221009A

Creators: Negro, Michela; Di Lalla, Niccoló; Omodei, Nicola; Veres, Peter; Silvestri, Stefano; Manfreda, Alberto; Burns, Eric; Baldini, Luca; Costa, Enrico; Ehlert, Steven R.; Kennea, Jamie A.; Liodakis, Ioannis; Marshall, Herman L.; Mereghetti, Sandro; Middei, Riccardo; Muleri, Fabio; O'Dell, Stephen L.; Roberts, Oliver J.; Romani, Roger W.; Sgró, Carmelo; Terashima, Masanobu; Tiengo, Andrea; Viscolo, Domenico; Di Marco, Alessandro; La Monaca, Fabio; Latronico, Luca; Matt, Giorgio; Perri, Matteo; Puccetti, Simonetta; Poutanen, Juri; Ratheesh, Ajay; Rogantini, Daniele; Slane, Patrick; Soffitta, Paolo; Lindfors, Elina; Nilsson, Kari; Kasikov, Anni; Marscher, Alan P.; Tavecchio, Fabrizio; Cibrario, Nicoló; Gunji, Shuichi; Malacaria, Christian; Paggi, Alessandro; Yang, Yi-Jung; Zane, Silvia; Weisskopf, Martin C.; Agudo, Ivan; Antonelli, Lucio A.; Bachetti, Matteo; Baumgartner, Wayne H.; Bellazzini, Ronaldo; Bianchi, Stefano; Bongiorno, Stephen D.; Bonino, Raffaella; Brez, Alessandro; Bucciantini, Niccoló; Capitanio, Fiamma; Castellano, Simone; Cavazzuti, Elisabetta; Chen, Chien-Ting J.; Ciprini, Stefano; De Rosa, Alessandra; Del Monte, Ettore; Di Gesu, Laura; Donnarumma, Immacolata; Doroshenko, Victor; Dovc̆iak, Michal; Enoto, Teruaki; Evangelista, Yuri; Fabiani, Sergio; Ferrazzoli, Riccardo; García, Javier A.; Hayashida, Kiyoshi; Heyl, Jeremy; Iwakiri, Wataru B.; Jorstad, Svetlana G.; Kaaret, Philip; Karas, Vladimir; Kislat, Fabian; Kitaguchi, Takao; Kolodziejczak, Jeffery J.; Krawczynski, Henric; Maldera, Simone; Marin, Frédéric; Marinucci, Andrea; Mitsuishi, Ikuyuki; Mizuno, Tsunefumi; Ng, C.-Y.; Oppedisano, Chiara; Papitto, Alessandro; Pavlov, George G.; Peirson, Abel L.; Pesce-Rollins, Melissa; Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier; Pilia, Maura; Possenti, Andrea; Ramsey, Brian D.; Rankin, John; Spandre, Gloria; Swartz, Douglas A.; Tamagawa, Toru; Taverna, Roberto; Tawara, Yuzuru; Tennant, Allyn F.; Thomas, Nicholas E.; Tombesi, Francesco; Trois, Alessio; Tsygankov, Sergey S.; Turolla, Roberto; Vink, Jacco; Wu, Kinwah; Xie, Fei

Abstract

We present the IXPE observation of GRB 221009A, which includes upper limits on the linear polarization degree of both prompt and afterglow emission in the soft X-ray energy band. GRB 221009A is an exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst (GRB) that reached Earth on 2022 October 9 after traveling through the dust of the Milky Way. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) pointed at GRB 221009A on October 11 to observe, for the first time, the 2–8 keV X-ray polarization of a GRB afterglow. We set an upper limit to the polarization degree of the afterglow emission of 13.8% at a 99% confidence level. This result provides constraints on the jet opening angle and the viewing angle of the GRB, or alternatively, other properties of the emission region. Additionally, IXPE captured halo-rings of dust-scattered photons that are echoes of the GRB prompt emission. The 99% confidence level upper limit to the prompt polarization degree depends on the background model assumption, and it ranges between ∼55% and ∼82%. This single IXPE pointing provides both the first assessment of X-ray polarization of a GRB afterglow and the first GRB study with polarization observations of both the prompt and afterglow phases.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Focus on the Ultra-luminous Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 221009A We thank Hintz Amenitsch for fruitful discussions on X-ray scattering at small angles. We also thank Joe Bright for pointing out a miscalculation of the k parameter in an earlier version of this paper. A special acknowledgement goes to developers of the Slack teamwork platform, which played a crucial role in enabling fast and efficient communication among several different teams. We thank I. Negueruela for the careful optical polarization observations at the Nordic Optical Telescope. This work is based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University, and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland, and Norway, the University of Iceland and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOT. M.N. acknowledges the support by NASA under award number 80GSFC21M0002. P.V. acknowledges support from NASA grant NNM11AA01A. IXPE-related research at Boston University is supported in part by U.S. National Science Foundation grant AST-2108622. S.M. and A.T. acknowledge financial support from the Italian MUR through grant PRIN 2017LJ39LM. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a joint US and Italian mission. The US contribution is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and led and managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), with industry partner Ball Aerospace (contract NNM15AA18C). The Italian contribution is supported by the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI) through contract ASI-OHBI-2017-12-I.0, agreements ASI-INAF-2017-12-H0 and ASI-INFN-2017.13-H0, and its Space Science Data Center (SSDC) with agreements ASI-INAF-2022-14-HH.0 and ASI-INFN 2021-43-HH.0, and by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy. This research used data products provided by the IXPE Team (MSFC, SSDC, INAF, and INFN) and distributed with additional software tools by the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

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