Journal article
Evidence for an intermediate-mass black hole from a gravitationally lensed gamma-ray burst
J Paynter, R Webster, E Thrane
Nature Astronomy | NATURE PORTFOLIO | Published : 2021
Abstract
If gamma-ray bursts are at cosmological distances, they must be gravitationally lensed occasionally1,2. The detection of lensed images with millisecond-to-second time delays provides evidence for intermediate-mass black holes, a population that has been difficult to observe. Several studies have searched for these delays in gamma-ray burst light curves, which would indicate an intervening gravitational lens3–6. Among the ~104 gamma-ray bursts observed, there have been a handful of claimed lensing detections7, but none have been statistically robust. Here we present a Bayesian analysis identifying gravitational lensing in the light curve of GRB 950830. The inferred lens mass Ml depends on the..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
E.T. is supported through Australian Research Council grant no. CE170100004 and no. FT150100281. The analysis software was run on The University of Melbourne's Spartan HPC system. This research has made use of data provided by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), which is a service of the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA/GSFC and the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. J.P. acknowledges S. Wyithe, M. Trenti and A. Melatos for constructive comments in analysing and interpreting the data and results. J.P. also thanks C. Shrader for assistance in understanding the BATSE instrumentation, and J. M. Burgess for constructive feedback on PyGRB and the proper analysis of gamma-ray data.