Search

Ninety gravitational wave events have been detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA network and are released in the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog. Among these events, 83 cases are definitely binary black hole mergers since the masses of all the objects involved significantly exceed the upper limit of neutron stars. The black holes in these merger events naturally form two interesting samples, a pre-merger sample that includes all the black holes before the mergers and a post-merger sample that consists of the black holes generated during the merging processes. The former represents black holes that once existed in the Universe, while the latter represents newly born black holes. Here we present a statistical analysis on these two samples. The non-parametric $\tau$ statistic method is adopted to correct for the observational selection effect. The Lynden-Bell's $C^{-}$ method is further applied to derive the mass distribution and density function of black holes. It is found that the mass distribution can be expressed as a broken power-law function. More interestingly, the power-law index in the high mass region is comparable for the two samples. The number density of black holes is found to depend on redshift as $\rho(z) \propto z^{-2.06}$-$z^{-2.12}$ based on the two samples. Implications of these findings on the origin of black holes are discussed., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

The minimum variation timescale (MVT) and spectral lag of hundreds of X-ray bursts (XRBs) from soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) J1935+2154 were analyzed in detail for the first time in our recent work, which are important probes for studying the physical mechanism and radiation region. In this work, we investigate their differential and cumulative distributions carefully and find that they follow power-law models. Besides, the distributions of fluctuations in both parameters follow the Tsallis $q$-Gaussian distributions and the $q$ values are consistent for different scale intervals. Therefore, these results indicate that both parameters are scale-invariant, which provides new parameters for the study of self-organized criticality systems. Interestingly, we find that the $q$ values for MVT and spectral lag are similar with duration and fluence, respectively., Comment: accepted by MNRAS

As one class of the most important objects in the universe, magnetars can produce a lot of different frequency bursts including X-ray bursts. In \cite{2022ApJS..260...24C}, 75 X-ray bursts produced by magnetar SGR J1935+2154 during an active period in 2020 are published, including the duration and net photon counts of each burst, and waiting time based on the trigger time difference. In this paper, we utilize the power-law model, $dN(x)/dx\propto (x+x_0)^{-\alpha_x}$, to fit the cumulative distributions of these parameters. It can be found that all the cumulative distributions can be well fitted, which can be interpreted by a self-organizing criticality theory. Furthermore, we check whether this phenomenon still exist in different energy bands and find that there is no obvious evolution. These findings further confirm that the X-ray bursts from magnetars are likely to be generated by some self-organizing critical process, which can be explained by a possible magnetic reconnection scenario in magnetars., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure and 3 tables; published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Precursors provide important clues to the nature of gamma-ray burst (GRB) central engines and can be used to contain GRB physical processes. In this letter, we study the self-organized criticality in precursors of long GRBs in the third Swift/BAT Catalog. We investigate the differential and cumulative size distributions of 100 precursors, including peak flux, duration, rise time, decay time, and quiescent time with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique. It is found that all of the distributions can be well described by power-law models and understood within the physical framework of a self-organized criticality system. In addition, we inspect the cumulative distribution functions of the size differences with a q-Gaussian function. The scale-invariance structures of precursors further strengthen our findings. Particularly, similar analyses are made in 127 main bursts. The results show that both precursors and main bursts can be attributed to an self-organized criticality system with the spatial dimension S = 3 and driven by the similar magnetically dominated process., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJL

The prompt phase of gamma-ray burst (GRB) contains essential information regarding the physical nature and central engine, which are as yet unknown. In this paper, we investigate the self-organized criticality (SOC) phenomena in GRB prompt phase as done in X-ray flares of GRBs. We obtain the differential and cumulative distributions of 243 short GRB pulses, such as peak flux, FWHM, rise time, decay time, and peak time in the fourth BATSE TTE Catalog with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique. It is found that these distributions can be well described by power-law models. In particular, comparisons are made in 182 short GRB pulses in the third Swift GRB Catalog from 2004 December to 2019 July. The results are essentially consistent with those in BATSE ones. We notice that there is no obvious power-law index evolution across different energy bands for either BATSE or Swift sGRBs. The joint analysis suggests that GRB prompt phase can be explained by a Fractal-Diffusive, Self-Organized Criticality (FD-SOC) system with the spatial dimension S = 3 and the classical diffusion ? = 1. Our findings show that GRB prompt phases and X-ray flares possess the very same magnetically dominated stochastic process and mechanism., Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in ApJS

Empirical correlations between various key parameters have been extensively explored ever since the discovery of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and have been widely used as standard candles to probe the Universe. The Amati relation and the Yonetoku relation are two good examples that enjoyed special attention. The former reflects the connection between the peak photon energy (Ep) and the isotropic $\gamma$-ray energy release (Eiso), while the latter links Ep with the isotropic peak luminosity (Lp), both in the form of a power-law function. Most GRBs are found to follow these correlations well, but a theoretical interpretation is still lacking. Some obvious outliers may be off-axis GRBs and may follow correlations that are different from those at the on-axis. Here we present a simple analytical derivation for the Amati relation and the Yonetoku relation in the framework of the standard fireball model, the correctness of which is then confirmed by numerical simulations. The off-axis Amati relation and Yonetoku relation are also derived. They differ markedly from the corresponding on-axis relation. Our results reveal the intrinsic physics behind the radiation processes of GRBs, and they highlight the importance of the viewing angle in the empirical correlations of GRBs., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. A&A accepted