An Optical Gamma-Ray Burst Catalogue with Measured Redshift PART I: Data Release of 535 Gamma-Ray Bursts and Colour Evolution

TL;DR

This paper compiles the largest optical photometry dataset of 535 gamma-ray bursts with redshifts, providing a web tool for visualization and analysis, enabling population studies and improved light curve reconstructions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive optical GRB catalogue with a web interface, GCN scraper, and methods for analyzing colour evolution, unifying community efforts and enhancing data accessibility.

Findings

Compiled 64813 observations of 535 GRBs with redshifts.

Developed a web tool for data visualization and analysis.

Identified colour evolution in a subset of GRBs.

Abstract

We present the largest optical photometry compilation of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) with redshifts ($z$). We include 64813 observations of 535 events (including upper limits) from 28 February 1997 up to 18 August 2023. We also present a user-friendly web tool \textit{grbLC} which allows users the visualization of photometry, coordinates, redshift, host galaxy extinction, and spectral indices for each event in our database. Furthermore, we have added a Gamma Ray Coordinate Network (GCN) scraper that can be used to collect data by gathering magnitudes from the GCNs. The web tool also includes a package for uniformly investigating colour evolution. We compute the optical spectral indices for 138 GRBs for which we have at least 4 filters at the same epoch in our sample and craft a procedure to distinguish between GRBs with and without colour evolution. By providing a uniform format and repository for the optical catalogue, this web-based archive is the first step towards unifying several community efforts to gather the photometric information for all GRBs with known redshifts. This catalogue will enable population studies by providing light curves (LCs) with better coverage since we have gathered data from different ground-based locations. Consequently, these LCs can be used to train future LC reconstructions for an extended inference of the redshift. The data gathering also allows us to fill some of the orbital gaps from Swift in crucial points of the LCs, e.g., at the end of the plateau emission or where a jet break is identified.