Gamma Ray Bursts as standard candles to constrain the cosmological parameters

Abstract

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are among the most powerful sources in the Universe: they emit up to 10^54 erg in the hard X-ray band in few tens of seconds. The cosmological origin of GRBs has been confirmed by several spectroscopic measurements of their redshifts, distributed in the range 0.1-6.3. These two properties make GRBs very appealing to investigate the far Universe. The energetics implied by the observed fluences and redshifts span at least four orders of magnitudes. Therefore, at first sight, GRBs are all but standard candles. But there are correlations among some observed quantities which allow us to know the total energy or the peak luminosity emitted by a specific burst with a great accuracy. Through these correlations, GRBs become "known" candles to constrain the cosmological parameters. One of these correlation is between the rest frame peak spectral energy E_peak and the total energy emitted in gamma--rays E_gamma, properly corrected for the collimation factor. Another correlation, discovered very recently, relates the total GRB luminosity L_iso, its peak spectral energy E_peak and a characteristic timescale T_0.45, related to the variability of the prompt emission. It is based only on prompt emission properties, it is completely phenomenological, model independent and assumption--free. The constraints found through these correlations on the Omega_M and Omega_Lambda parameters are consistent with the concordance model. The present limited sample of bursts and the lack of low redshift events, necessary to calibrate these correlations, makes the cosmological constraints obtained with GRBs still large compared to those obtained with other cosmological probes (e.g. SNIa or CMB). However, the newly born field of GRB--cosmology is very promising for the future.