A Further Study of the tBurst of GRBs: Rest-frame Properties, External Plateau Contributions, and Multiple Parameter Analysis

Zhang et al. propose to redefine the true γ-ray burst (GRB) central engine activity duration, tBurst, by considering the contributions from the prompt γ-ray emission, X-ray flare, and internal plateau features. With a comprehensive study of a large sample of Swift GRBs, it is shown that the distribution in the observer frame consists of a bimodal feature, suggesting the existence of a new population of ultra-long GRBs. In this work, we make a series of further studies on tBurst: we update the Swift GRB sample up to 2016 June; we investigate the properties of tBurst distribution in the rest frame; we redefine tBurstby involving external plateau contributions; and we make a multiple parameter analysis to investigate whether the bursts within the ultra-long population are statistically different in the sense of other features besides the duration distribution. We find that for all situations, the distribution of tBurst requires two normal distributions in logarithmic space to provide a good fit both in the observer frame and in the rest frame. Considering the observational gap effect would not completely erase the bimodal distribution feature. However, the bursts within the ultra-long population may have no statistical difference in the sense of other features besides the duration term. We thus suggest that if the ultra-long population of GRBs indeed exists, their central engine and radiation mechanisms should be similar to those of the normal population, but they have a longer central engine activity timescale. © 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.