Swift Observations of GRB 181013A

P. D'Avanzo (INAF-OAB), J.P. Osborne (U. Leicester) and N.P.M. Kuin (UCL-MSSL) for the Swift team

1. Introduction

At 02:39:29 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and located GRB 181013A (trigger=866783) (D'Avanzo et al. GCN Circ. 23332). Swift slewed immediately to the burst. At the time of the trigger, the initial BAT position was 49° from the Sun (0.6 hours East) and 69° from the 17%-illuminated Moon. Table 1 contains the best reported positions from Swift.

Table 2 is a summary of GCN Circulars about this GRB from observatories other than Swift.

Standard analysis products for this burst are available at https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/swift_gnd_ana.html.

2. BAT Observations and Analysis

As reported by Markwardt et al. (GCN Circ. 23335), the BAT ground-calculated position is RA, Dec = 207.661, 40.107 deg, which is RA(J2000) = 13h50m38.5s Dec(J2000) = +40°06'26.8" with an uncertainty of 3.3 arcmin, (radius, sys+stat, 90% containment). The partial coding was 81%.

The mask-weighted light curve (Figure 1) shows peaks starting at ~T-5 s and ending at ~T+120 s. T90 (15-350 keV) is 104.1 ± 53.5 s (estimated error including systematics).

The time-averaged spectrum from T+18.37 to T+123.97 s is best fit by a simple power-law model. The power law index of the time-averaged spectrum is 1.82 ± 0.75. The fluence in the 15-150 keV band is 3.0 ± 1.4 x 10-7 erg cm-2. This fluence is larger than that of 12% of the long GRBs in the Second BAT GRB Catalog (Sakamoto et al. 2011). The 1-s peak photon flux measured from T+18.80 s in the 15-150 keV band is 0.5 ± 0.2 ph cm-2 s-1. All the quoted errors are at the 90% confidence level.

The results of the batgrbproduct analysis are available at https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/notices_s/866783/BA/.

3. XRT Observations and Analysis

Analysis of the initial XRT data was reported by Osborne et al. (GCN Circ. 23334). We have analysed 190 s of Photon Counting (PC) mode XRT data for the Swift/BAT-detected burst GRB 181013A, collected between T0+115 s and T0+306 s. An uncatalogued X-ray source is detected consistent with being within 296 arcsec of the Swift/BAT position and is above the RASS limit and fading with 3-sigma significance, and is therefore likely the GRB afterglow.

The light curve (Figure 2) can be modelled with a power-law decay with a decay index of α=7.6 (+0.4, -1.0).

A spectrum formed from the PC mode data can be fitted with an absorbed power-law with a photon spectral index of 0.98 (+0.30, -0.19). The best-fitting absorption column is consistent with the Galactic value of 9.4 x 1019 cm-2 (Willingale et al. 2013). The counts to observed (unabsorbed) 0.3-10 keV flux conversion factor deduced from this spectrum is 6.2 x 10-11 (6.2 x 10-11) erg cm-2 count-1.

4. UVOT Observations and Analysis

The Swift/UVOT began settled observations of the field of GRB 181013A 106 s after the BAT trigger (Kuin and D'Avanzo GCN Circ. 23336). No optical afterglow consistent with the XRT position (Osborne et al. GCN Circ. 23334) is detected in the initial UVOT exposures. Table 3 gives preliminary magnitudes using the UVOT photometric system (Breeveld et al. 2011, AIP Conf. Proc., 1358, 373). No correction has been made for the expected extinction in the Milky Way corresponding to a reddening of EB-V of 0.01 mag. in the direction of the GRB (Schlegel et al. 1998).

BAT light curve

Figure 1. The BAT mask-weighted light curve in the four individual and total energy bands. The units are counts s-1 illuminated-detector-1. The vertical green dash-dotted lines show the T50 interval, the vertical black dashed lines show the T90 interval, and vertical blue (orange) solid lines show the start (stop) of slews.

RA (J2000) Dec (J2000) Error Note Reference
13h50m36.43s +40°06'29.5" 3.9" XRT Osborne et al. GCN Circ. 23334
13h50m38.5s +40°06'26.8" 3.3' BAT-refined Markwardt et al. GCN Circ. 23335

Table 1. Positions from the Swift instruments.

Band Authors GCN Circ. Subject Observatory Notes
Optical Lipunov et al. 23333 Global MASTER Net optical observations MASTER upper limits
Optical Mazaeva et al. 23341 AbAO optical upper limit Abastumani Astro. Obs. upper limits

Table 2. Summary of GCN Circulars from other observatories sorted by band and then circular number.

Filter Tstart(s) Tstop(s) Exp(s) Mag
whiteFC 867 1017 147 >20.2
uFC 266 516 246 >19.1
white 867 1017 147 >20.2
u 266 516 246 >19.1
w1 818 7875 471 >20.4
m2 6035 7669 393 >19.6
w2 5624 7260 393 >20.8

Table 3. UVOT observations reported by Kuin and D'Avanzo (GCN Circ. 23336). The start and stop times of the exposures are given in seconds since the BAT trigger. The preliminary 3-σ upper limits are given. No correction has been made for extinction in the Milky Way.

October 16, 2018