A search for millimetric emission from Gamma Ray Bursts

Abstract

We have used the 2- year Differential Microwave Radiometer data from the COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite to systematically search for millimetric (31 - 90 GHz) emission from the Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) in the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) GRB 3B catalog. The large beamsize of the COBE instrument (7 degs FWHM) allows for an efficient search of the large GRB positional error boxes, although it also means that fluxes from (point source) GRB objects will be somewhat diluted. A likelihood analysis has been used to look for a change in the level of millimetric emission from the locations of 81 GRB events during the first two years (1990 & 1991) of the COBE mission. The likelihood analysis determined that we did not find any significant millimetric signal before or after the occurance of the GRB. We find 95% confidence level upper limits of 175, 192 and 645 Jy or, in terms of fluxes, of 9.6, 16.3 and 54.8 10^{-13} erg/cm^2/s, respectively at 31, 53 and 90 GHz. We also look separately at different classes of GRBs, including a study of the top ten (in peak flux) GRBs, the "short burst" and "long burst" subsets, finding similar upper limits. While these limits may be somewhat higher than one would like, we estimate that using this technique with future planned missions could push these limits down to \sim 1 mJy.