Eri Sonoda

Spectral Evolution of GRB060904A Observed with Swift and Suzaku- Possibility of Inefficient Electron Acceleration

We observed an X-ray afterglow of GRB 060904A with the Swift and Suzaku satellites. We found rapid spectral softening during both the prompt tail phase and the decline phase of an X-ray flare in the BAT and XRT data. The observed spectra were fit by power-law photon indices which rapidly changed from

Swift and Suzaku observations of the X-ray afterglow from the GRB 060105

\Gamma = 1.51^{+0.04}_{-0.03}

Current Status of the Suzaku Wide‐band All‐sky Monitor (WAM)

to

New probes of GRB prompt emission properties using wide-band spectroscopy by Suzaku Wide-band All-sky Monitor

\Gamma = 5.30^{+0.69}_{-0.59}

Status of GRB Observations with the Suzaku Wideband All‐sky Monitor

within a few hundred seconds in the prompt tail. This is one of the steepest X-ray spectra ever observed, making it quite difficult to explain by simple electron acceleration and synchrotron radiation. Then, we applied an alternative spectral fitting using a broken power-law with exponential cutoff (BPEC) model. It is valid to consider the situation that the cutoff energy is equivalent to the synchrotron frequency of the maximum energy electrons in their energy distribution. Since the spectral cutoff appears in the soft X-ray band, we conclude the electron acceleration has been inefficient in the internal shocks of GRB 060904A. These cutoff spectra suddenly disappeared at the transition time from the prompt tail phase to the shallow decay one. After that, typical afterglow spectra with the photon indices of 2.0 are continuously and preciously monitored by both XRT and Suzaku/XIS up to 1 day since the burst trigger time. We could successfully trace the temporal history of two characteristic break energies (peak energy and cutoff energy) and they show the time dependence of

The spectral properties of the GRB prompt gamma‐ray emission observed by the Suzaku Wide‐band All‐sky Monitor

\propto t^{-3} \sim t^{-4}

Design and in-orbit performance of the Suzaku Wide-band All-sky monitor

while the following afterglow spectra are quite stable. This fact indicates that the emitting material of prompt tail is due to completely different dynamics from the shallow decay component. Therefore we conclude the emission sites of two distinct phenomena obviously differ from each other.

A Catalog of Suzaku/WAM Hard X-Ray Solar Flares

Results are presented of early X-ray afterglow observations of GRB 060105 by Swift and Suzaku. The bright, long gamma-ray burst GRB 060105 triggered the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) at 06:49:28 on 5 January 2006. The Suzaku team commenced a pre-planned target of opportunity observation at 19 ks (5.3 hr) after the Swift trigger. Following the prompt emission and successive very steep decay, a shallow decay was observed from T_0+187 s to T_0+1287 s. After an observation gap during T_0 +(1.5-3) ks, an extremely early steep decay was observed in T_0+(4-30) ks. The lightcurve flattened again at T_0+30 ks, and another steep decay followed from T_0+50 ks to the end of observations. Both steep decays exhibited decay indices of 2.3 - 2.4. This very early break, if it is a jet break, is the earliest case among X-ray afterglow observations, suggesting a very narrow jet whose opening angle is well below 1 degree. The unique Suzaku/XIS data allow us to set very tight upper limits on line emission or absorption in this GRB. For the reported pseudo-redshift of z=4.0+/-1.3 the upper limit on the iron line equivalent width is 50 eV.

GRB 090510: Suzaku WAM observation of the prompt emission.

The Suzaku Wide‐band All‐sky Monitor (WAM) consists of 20 BGO anti‐coincidence scintillators for the Hard X‐ray Detector (HXD). The WAM has a wide field of view (FOV), about half of the whole sky, a large collecting area, 800 cm2, and broad‐band energy coverage from 50 to 5000 keV. Thus it has been designed to work as a gamma‐ray burst detector. For the three years since Suzaku launch in July 2005, the WAM has been working very well. About 500 GRBs have been detected through the end of 2008, corresponding to a detection rate of ∼140 GRBs per year. The current status of the WAM is presented in this paper.

GRB 091109B: Suzaku WAM observation of the prompt emission.

Although the afterglow observations in HETE‐2 and Swift era have revealed a lot of afterglow properties of gamma‐ray bursts (GRBs), we still have poor understanding of the prompt gamma‐ray emission, such as the emission mechanism of the prompt emission and differences between short and long duration GRBs. We have observed many prompt emission of GRBs by Suzaku Wide‐band All‐sky Monitor in wide energy range of 50–5000 keV, with very large effective area of 400 cm2 even at 1 MeV. Furthermore, a combination of the Suzaku/WAM and Swift data provides us not only wider energy range of 15–5000 keV but also redshift information even for some short GRBs. Thanks to these information, we can firstly investigate an intrinsic correlation for short GRBs like Epeak−Liso relation, and we can derive the same type of relation for time‐resolved spectra of long GRBs in finer time‐scale with higher statistics than ever before. These results could be used to discuss the differences between short and long GRBs, and our time‐res...