Are there cosmological evolution trends on gamma-ray burst features?

Abstract

The variability of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) is thought to be correlated with its absolute peak luminosity, and this relation had been used to derive an estimate of the redshifts of GRBs. Recently, Amati et al. presented the results of spectral and energetic properties of several GRBs with known redshifts. Here, we analyse the properties of two groups of GRBs: one group with known redshift from afterglow observation and another group with redshift derived from the luminosity-variability relation. We study the redshift dependence of various GRBs features in their cosmological rest frames, including the burst duration, the isotropic luminosity and radiated energy, and the peak energy Ep of vFv spectra. We find that, for these two groups of GRBs, their properties are all redshift-dependent, i.e. their intrinsic duration, luminosity, radiated energy and peak energy Ep are all correlated with the redshift, which means that there are cosmological evolution effects on gamma-ray burst features, and this can provide an interesting clue to the nature of GRB s. If this is true, then the results also imply that the redshift derived from the luminosity-variability relation may be reliable.