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On the connection of gamma-ray bursts and X-ray flashes in the BATSE and RHESSI databases

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2016

Abstract

Classification of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) into groups has been intensively studied by various statistical tests in previous years. It has been suggested that there was a distinct group of GRBs, beyond the long and short ones, with intermediate durations.

However, such a group is not securely confirmed yet. Strangely, concerning the spectral hardness, the observations from the Swift and RHESSI satellites give different results.

For the Swift/BAT database it is found that the intermediate-duration bursts might well be related to so-called X-ray flashes (XRFs). On the other hand, for the RHESSI dataset the intermediate-duration bursts seem to be spectrally too hard to be given by XRFs.

The connection of the intermediate-duration bursts and XRFs for the BATSE database is not clear as well. The purpose of this article is to check the relation between XRFs and GRBs for the BATSE and RHESSI databases, respectively.

We use an empirical definition of XRFs introduced by other authors earlier.