Evidence for new relations between gamma-ray burst prompt and x-ray afterglow emission from 9 years of swift

When a massive star explodes as a gamma-ray burst (GRB), information about the explosion is retained in the properties of the prompt and afterglow emission. We report on new relations between the prompt and X-ray afterglow emission of Swift-detected GRBs found from Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) and X-Ray Telescope data covering 2004 December to 2013 August (754 in total). These relations suggest that the prompt and afterglow emission are closely linked. In particular, we find very strong correlations between the BAT 15-150 keV T ₉₀ and the break times before and after the plateau phase in the 0.3-10 keV X-ray afterglow light curves. We also find a strong anticorrelation between the photon index of the GRB prompt emission and the X-ray spectral slope of the afterglow. Moreover, anticorrelations exist between the rest-frame peak energy in the prompt emission E _peak, z and the X-ray afterglow decay slope during the plateau phase and the break times after the plateau phase. The rest- frame break times before and after the plateau phase are also anticorrelated with the rest-frame 15-150 keV luminosity and the isotropic energy during the prompt emission. A principal component analysis suggests that the GRB properties are primarily driven by the luminosity/energy release in the 15-150 keV band. Luminosity functions derived at different redshifts from a log N-log S analysis indicate that the density of bright bursts is significantly lower in the local universe than in the universe at z ≈ 3, where the density of bright GRBs peaks. Using cluster analysis, we find that the duration of BAT-detected short GRBs is less than 1 s. We also present a catalog of all Swift onboard-detected bursts.