Identifying Black Hole Central Engines in Gamma-Ray Bursts

TL;DR

This paper identifies specific long gamma-ray bursts with energetics indicating black hole central engines, analyzes their properties, and estimates black hole masses, providing insights into the nature of GRB engines and energy sources.

Contribution

It introduces a method to identify black hole central engines in GRBs based on energetics and estimates black hole masses using the Blandford-Znajek mechanism.

Findings

8 GRBs with energetics >10^52 erg likely powered by black holes

Black hole masses estimated between ~2-60 solar masses

Some black holes may lie in the mass gap region (2-5 solar masses)

Abstract

The nature of the gamma-ray burst (GRB) central engine still remains an enigma. Entities widely believed to be capable of powering the extreme jets are magnetars and black holes. The maximum rotational energy that is available in a millisecond magnetar to form a jet is ~10^52 erg. We identify 8 long GRBs whose jet opening angle corrected energetics of the prompt emission episode are >10^52 erg with high confidence level and therefore, their central engines are expected to be black holes. Majority of these GRBs present significant emission in sub-GeV energy range. The X-ray afterglow light curves of these bursts do not show any shallow decay behaviour such as a plateau, however, a few cases exhibit flares and multiple breaks instead of a single power-law decay. For a minimum mass of the black hole (~2 Msun), we find the efficiency of producing a jet from its rotational energy to range between 2%-270%. Highly energetic jets requiring high efficiencies implies that either the mass of these black holes are much larger or there are, in addition, other sources of energy which power the jet. By considering the Blandford-Znajek mechanism of jet formation, we estimate the masses of these black holes to range between ~2-60 Msun. Some of the lighter black holes formed in these catastrophic events are likely candidates to lie in the mass gap region (2-5 Msun).