Hard X-ray polarization catalog for a 5-year sample of Gamma-Ray Bursts using AstroSat CZT-Imager

TL;DR

This paper presents the first catalog of gamma-ray burst polarization measurements from AstroSat's CZTI over five years, revealing mostly low polarization levels with some highly polarized bursts, and compares results with POLAR observations.

Contribution

It introduces new analysis modifications to enhance CZTI's polarimetric sensitivity and provides the first comprehensive catalog of GRB polarization measurements from AstroSat.

Findings

Most GRBs show low or null polarization.

A small fraction of GRBs exhibit high polarization.

CZTI detects more high polarization cases than POLAR.

Abstract

Cadmium Zinc Telluride Imager (CZTI) aboard AstroSat has been regularly detecting Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) since its launch in 2015. Its sensitivity to polarization measurements at energies above 100 keV allows CZTI to attempt spectro-polarimetric studies of GRBs. Here, we present the first catalog of GRB polarization measurements made by CZTI during its first five years of operation. This presents the time integrated polarization measurements of the prompt emission of 20 GRBs in the energy range 100-600 keV. The sample includes the bright GRBs which were detected within an angle range of 0-60 degree and 120-180 degree where the instrument has useful polarization sensitivity and is less prone to systematics. We implement a few new modifications in the analysis to enhance polarimetric sensitivity of the instrument. Majority of the GRBs in the sample are found to possess less / null polarization across the total bursts' duration in contrast to a small fraction of five GRBs exhibiting high polarization. The low polarization across the bursts can be speculated to be either due to the burst being intrinsically weakly polarized or due to varying polarization angle within the burst even when it is highly polarized. In comparison to POLAR measurements, CZTI has detected a larger number of cases with high polarization. This may be a consequence of the higher energy window of CZTI observations which results in the sampling of smaller duration of burst emissions in contrast to POLAR, thereby, probing emissions of less temporal variations of polarization properties.