Kavli Affiliate: Michael Fausnaugh
| First 5 Authors: Rahul Jayaraman, Michael Fausnaugh, George R. Ricker, Roland Vanderspek,
| Summary:
Very few detections have been made of optical flashes contemporaneous with
prompt high-energy emission from a gamma-ray burst (GRB). In this work, we
present and analyze light curves of GRB-associated optical flashes and
afterglows from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Our sample
consists of eight GRBs with arcsecond-level localizations from the X-Ray
Telescope on board the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. For each burst, we
characterize the prompt optical emission and any observed afterglow, and
constrain physical parameters for four of these bursts using their TESS light
curves. This work also presents a straightforward method to correct for TESS’s
cosmic ray mitigation on 20-second timescales, which allows us to estimate the
"true" brightness of optical flashes associated with prompt GRB emission. We
also highlight TESS’s continuous wide-field monitoring capability, which
provides an efficient means of identifying optical emission from GRBs and
characterizing early-time afterglow light curves. Based on empirical detection
rates from Swift and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, up to 10 GRBs per
year may fall within the contemporaneous TESS field of view.
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