MAGIC observation of GRB080430

TL;DR

This paper discusses the MAGIC telescope's observation of GRB080430, a gamma-ray burst at moderate redshift, to evaluate the potential of ground-based observatories in studying GRB afterglows and probing the extragalactic background light.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed analysis of GRB080430 with MAGIC, highlighting the capabilities of Cherenkov telescopes for late-afterglow observations and background light studies.

Findings

GRB080430 was observed a few hours after the burst.

The observation demonstrates the potential of MAGIC for studying GRB afterglows.

Results contribute to understanding high-energy emission processes and extragalactic background light.

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts are cosmological sources emitting radiation from the gamma-rays to the radio band. Substantial observational efforts have been devoted to the study of GRBs during the prompt phase, i.e. the initial burst of high-energy radiation, and during the longer-lasting afterglows. In spite of many successes in interpreting these phenomena there are still several open key questions about the fundamental emission processes, their energetics and the environment. Moreover, independently of their modeling, GRB spectra are remarkably simple, being satisfactorily fitted with power-laws, and therefore offer a very valuable tool to probe the extragalactic background light distribution affecting all high-energy observations of cosmological sources. Observations carried out with Cherenkov telescopes, as MAGIC, can be fundamental for all these scientific topics. GRB080430, being at a rather moderate redshift, z~0.76, and well-studied in the optical, although observed only a few hours after the high-energy event, is a good test case to evaluate the perspective for late-afterglow observations with ground based GeV/TeV observatories.