Identifying the Location in the Host Galaxy of the Short GRB 111117A with the Chandra Subarcsecond Position

Sakamoto, T. and Troja, E. and Aoki, K. and Guiriec, S. and Im, M. and Leloudas, G. and Malesani, D. and Melandri, A. and de Ugarte, Postigo A. and Urata, Y. and Xu, D. and D'Avanzo, P. and Gorosabel, J. and Jeon, Y. and Sánchez-Ramírez, R. and Andersen, M. I. and Bai, J. and Barthelmy, S. D. and Briggs, M. S. and Foley, S. and Fruchter, A. S. and Fynbo, J. P. U. and Gehrels, N. and Huang, K. and Jang, M. and Kawai, N. and Korhonen, H. and Mao, J. and Norris, J. P. and Preece, R. D. and Vida, Krisztián (2013) Identifying the Location in the Host Galaxy of the Short GRB 111117A with the Chandra Subarcsecond Position. ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 766 (1). ISSN 1538-4357

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Abstract

We present our successful Chandra program designed to identify, with sub-arcsecond accuracy, the X-ray afterglow of the short GRB 111117A, which was discovered by Swift and Fermi. Thanks to our rapid target of opportunity request, Chandra clearly detected the X-ray afterglow, though no optical afterglow was found in deep optical observations. The host galaxy was clearly detected in the optical and near-infrared band, with the best photometric redshift of z = 1.31+0.46 −0.23 (90% confidence), making it one of the highest known short GRB redshifts. Furthermore, we see an offset of 1.0 ± 0.2 arcseconds, which corresponds to 8.4 ± 1.7 kpc, between the host and the afterglow position. We discuss the importance of using Chandra for obtaining sub-arcsecond X-ray localizations of short GRB afterglows to study GRB environments.

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