Observation of GRBs by the MAGIC Telescope, Status and Outlook

TL;DR

The paper discusses the status and outlook of observing Gamma Ray Bursts with the MAGIC telescope, highlighting its capabilities, recent observations, and future expectations for detecting very high energy gamma rays.

Contribution

It provides an update on MAGIC's GRB observation efforts, including operational experience and revised expectations for future detections.

Findings

Several GRB follow-ups performed without successful VHE detection

MAGIC's fast repositioning enables prompt observations

Revised expectations for future GRB observations with MAGIC

Abstract

Observation of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) in the Very High Energy (VHE) domain will provide important information on the physical conditions in GRB outflows. The MAGIC telescope is the best suited Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) for these observations. Thanks to its fast repositioning time and low energy threshold, MAGIC is able to start quickly the follow-up observation, triggered by an alert from the GRB Coordinates Network (GCN), and observe the prompt emission and early afterglow phase from GRBs. In the last two years of operation several GRB follow-up observations were performed by MAGIC, however, until now without successful detection of VHE gamma rays above threshold energies >100 GeV. In this paper we revise the expectations for the GRB observations with MAGIC, based on the experience from the last years of operation.