The X-shooter GRB afterglow legacy sample (XS-GRB)

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive, homogeneous spectroscopic dataset of 93 GRB afterglows observed with X-shooter, covering a wide redshift range, and provides valuable insights into the properties of GRB environments and the interstellar medium across cosmic time.

Contribution

It offers the first large, unbiased, publicly available sample of GRB afterglow spectra with redshift measurements and detailed spectral data, enhancing studies of GRB host environments and cosmic evolution.

Findings

Sample is representative of the Swift GRB population.

Fraction of dark bursts is less than 28%.

Increased number of HI column density measurements by 33%.

Abstract

In this work we present spectra of all $\gamma$-ray burst (GRB) afterglows that have been promptly observed with the X-shooter spectrograph until 31-03-2017. In total, we obtained spectroscopic observations of 103 individual GRBs observed within 48 hours of the GRB trigger. Redshifts have been measured for 97 per cent of these, covering a redshift range from 0.059 to 7.84. Based on a set of observational selection criteria that minimize biases with regards to intrinsic properties of the GRBs, the follow-up effort has been focused on producing a homogeneous sample of 93 afterglow spectra for GRBs discovered by the Swift satellite. We here provide a public release of all the reduced spectra, including continuum estimates and telluric absorption corrections. For completeness, we also provide reductions for the 18 late-time observations of the underlying host galaxies. We provide an assessment of the degree of completeness with respect to the parent GRB population, in terms of the X-ray properties of the bursts in the sample and find that the sample presented here is representative of the full Swift sample. We constrain the fraction of dark bursts to be < 28 per cent and we confirm previous results that higher optical darkness is correlated with increased X-ray absorption. For the 42 bursts for which it is possible, we provide a measurement of the neutral hydrogen column density, increasing the total number of published HI column density measurements by $\sim$ 33 per cent. This dataset provides a unique resource to study the ISM across cosmic time, from the local progenitor surroundings to the intervening universe.