Generalized Tests for Selection Effects in GRB High-Energy Correlations

Understand

Several correlations among parameters derived from modelling the high-energy properties of GRBs have been reported.

• We show that well-known examples of these have common features indicative of strong contamination by selection effects.
• We focus here on the impact of detector threshold truncation on the spectral peak versus isotropic equivalent energy release ($E_{\rm pk}$-$E_{\rm iso}$) relation, extended to a large sample of 218 Swift and 56 HETE-2 GRBs with and without measured redshift.
• The existence of faint Swift events missing from pre-Swift surveys calls into question inferences based on pre-Swift surveys which must be subject to complicated incompleteness effects.