The Complete BATSE Spectral Catalog of Bright Gamma-Ray Bursts

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive spectral catalog of 350 bright Gamma-Ray Bursts observed with BATSE, analyzing their spectral properties, correlations, and evolution to better understand GRB emission mechanisms.

Contribution

It presents the most extensive spectral catalog of GRBs to date, including systematic analysis of spectral parameters using multiple models and exploring their correlations and evolution.

Findings

Spectral parameters vary with different models.

Correlations among spectral parameters are identified.

Spectral evolution patterns within bursts are characterized.

Abstract

We present a systematic spectral analysis of 350 bright Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) observed with the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE; $\sim$ 30 keV -- 2 MeV) with high temporal and spectral resolution. Our sample was selected from the complete set of 2704 BATSE GRBs based on their energy fluence or peak photon flux values to assure good statistics, and included 17 short GRBs. To obtain well-constrained spectral parameters, several photon models were used to fit each spectrum. We compared spectral parameters resulting from the fits using different models, and the spectral parameters that best represent each spectrum were statistically determined, taking into account the parameterization differences among the models. A thorough analysis was performed on 350 time-integrated and 8459 time-resolved burst spectra, and the effects of integration times in determining the spectral parameters were explored. Using the results, we studied correlations among spectral parameters and their evolution pattern within each burst. The resulting spectral catalog is the most comprehensive study of spectral properties of GRB prompt emission to date, and is available electronically from the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC). The catalog provides reliable constraints on particle acceleration and emission mechanisms in GRBs.