Generalized Tests for Selection Effects in GRB High-Energy Correlations

TL;DR

This paper investigates selection effects in GRB high-energy correlations, demonstrating that many observed relations are influenced by detector thresholds and data truncation, and introduces a generalized method to account for these biases.

Contribution

It presents a new generalized method for treating data truncation in correlation analyses of GRB properties, revealing that some well-known correlations are largely affected by selection effects.

Findings

Selection effects significantly influence GRB correlations.

The $E_{ m pk}$-$E_{ m iso}$ relation is affected by detector thresholds.

The $E_{ m pk}$-$E_{ m ext{gamma}}$ correlation is independent of redshift.

Abstract

Several correlations among parameters derived from modelling the high-energy properties of GRBs have been reported. We show that well-known examples of these have common features indicative of strong contamination by selection effects. We focus here on the impact of detector threshold truncation on the spectral peak versus isotropic equivalent energy release ($E_{\rm pk}$-$E_{\rm iso}$) relation, extended to a large sample of 218 Swift and 56 HETE-2 GRBs with and without measured redshift. The existence of faint Swift events missing from pre-Swift surveys calls into question inferences based on pre-Swift surveys which must be subject to complicated incompleteness effects. We demonstrate a generalized method for treating data truncation in correlation analyses and apply this method to Swift and pre-Swift data. Also, we show that the $E_{\rm pk}$-$E_{\gamma}$ ("Ghirlanda") correlation is effectively independent of the GRB redshifts, which suggests its existence has little to do with intrinsic physics. We suggest that a physically-based correlation, manifest observationally, must show significantly reduced scatter in the rest frame relative to the observer frame and must not persist if the assumed redshifts are scattered. As with the $E_{\rm pk}$-$E_{\gamma}$ correlation, we find that the pre-Swift, bright GRB $E_{\rm pk}$-$E_{\rm iso}$ correlation of \citet{amati06} does not rigorously satisfy these conditions.