GRB Sky Distribution Puzzles

TL;DR

This paper investigates the sky distribution of gamma-ray bursts and their correlation with CMB fluctuations, revealing a potential systematic effect in their apparent association.

Contribution

It introduces a mosaic correlation mapping method to analyze the relationship between gamma-ray burst positions and CMB peaks, highlighting a possible systematic bias.

Findings

Detected correlation between burst positions and CMB peaks

Identified potential systematic effects in sky distribution data

Suggests large-scale structure influences gamma-ray burst distribution

Abstract

We analyze the randomness of the sky distribution of cosmic gamma-ray bursts. These events are associated with massive galaxies, spiral or elliptical, and therefore their positions should trace the large-scale structure, which, in turn, could show up in the sky distribution of fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We test this hypothesis by mosaic correlation mapping of the distributions of CMB peaks and burst positions, find the distribution of these two signals to be correlated, and interpret this correlation as a possible systematic effect.