Landing page for project EG118

Short Gamma-ray Burst (GRB) are powerful and brief flashes generated by the merger of a neutron star and a black hole or two neutron stars, in a binary system. The progenitors and the dynamical interaction of the binary system which leads to the merger strongly depend on the surrounding environment: the study of the galaxies which host these events is therefore crucial to understand both the binary formation channels and evolution. During a systematic search for late radio emission from GRB afterglows in the VLASS, we detected the host galaxy of a short GRB, which turned out to be present also in the FIRST and NVSS surveys and detected by LOFAR. However, all the available data outline a picture that is not fully consistent, possibly also because of the limited sensitivity and angular resolution of the existing observations. In particular, it is not possible to discriminate between diffuse and nuclear emission, with both extremes constituting intriguing scenarios in the physics leading to the formation of short GRBs. We therefore propose to observe this host galaxy with eMERLIN+EVN, in order to discern between a compact component and a diffuse emission, and to estimate their relative contributions.

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197