Spectral properties of long and short Gamma-Ray Bursts: comparison between BATSE and Fermi bursts

Understand

We compare the spectral properties of 227 Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) detected by the Fermi Gamma Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) up to February 2010 with those of bursts detected by the CGRO/BATSE instrument.

• Out of 227 Fermi GRBs, 166 have a measured peak energy E_peak_obs of their \nuF(\nu) spectrum: of these 146 and 20 belong the long and short class, respectively.
• Fermi long bursts follow the correlations defined by BATSE bursts between their E_peak_obs vs fluence and peak flux: as already shown for the latter ones, these correlations and their slopes do not originate from instrumental selection effects.
• Fermi/GBM bursts extend such correlations toward lower fluence/peak energy values with respect to BATSE ones whereas no GBM long burst with E_peak_obs exceeding a few MeV is found, despite the possibility of detecting them.