GCN Circular 19018
Subject
GRB 160216A: Swift-XRT refined Analysis
Date
2016-02-17T08:31:13Z (9 years ago)
From
Phil Evans at U of Leicester <pae9@leicester.ac.uk>
A. D'Ai (INAF-IASFPA), A. Maselli (INAF-IASFPA), A. Melandri
(INAF-OAB), J.A. Kennea (PSU), B. Sbarufatti (INAF-OAB/PSU), D.N.
Burrows (PSU), C. Pagani (U. Leicester), A.P. Beardmore (U. Leicester),
P.A. Evans (U. Leicester) and E. Troja report on behalf of the
Swift-XRT team:
We have analysed 7.5 ks of XRT data for GRB 160216A (Troja et al. GCN
Circ. 19014), from 81 s to 34.6 ks after the BAT trigger. The data
comprise 36 s in Windowed Timing (WT) mode (the first 8 s were taken
while Swift was slewing) with the remainder in Photon Counting (PC)
mode. The enhanced XRT position for this burst was given by Beardmore
et al. (GCN Circ. 19015).
The light curve can be modelled with a power-law decay with a decay
index of alpha=0.996 (+0.026, -0.025).
A spectrum formed from the PC mode data can be fitted with an absorbed
power-law with a photon spectral index of 1.90 (+0.18, -0.17). The
best-fitting absorption column is 5.4 (+1.2, -1.0) x 10^21 cm^-2, in
excess of the Galactic value of 4.5 x 10^20 cm^-2 (Willingale et al.
2013). The counts to observed (unabsorbed) 0.3-10 keV flux conversion
factor deduced from this spectrum is 4.4 x 10^-11 (6.8 x 10^-11) erg
cm^-2 count^-1.
A summary of the PC-mode spectrum is thus:
Total column: 5.4 (+1.2, -1.0) x 10^21 cm^-2
Galactic foreground: 4.5 x 10^20 cm^-2
Excess significance: 7.8 sigma
Photon index: 1.90 (+0.18, -0.17)
If the light curve continues to decay with a power-law decay index of
0.996, the count rate at T+24 hours will be 0.010 count s^-1,
corresponding to an observed (unabsorbed) 0.3-10 keV flux of 4.4 x
10^-13 (6.9 x 10^-13) erg cm^-2 s^-1.
The results of the XRT-team automatic analysis are available at
http://www.swift.ac.uk/xrt_products/00673978.
This circular is an official product of the Swift-XRT team.