Timing properties of gamma-ray bursts detected by SPI-ACS detector onboard INTEGRAL

Abstract

Aims: We study timing properties of a large sample of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) detected by the anti-coincidence shield (ACS) of the SPI spectrometer of INTEGRAL telescope. Methods. We identify GRB-like events in the SPI-ACS data. The data set under investigation is the history of count rate of the SPI-ACS detector recorded with a binning of 50 ms over the time span of ∼10 yr. In spite of the fact that SPI-ACS does not have imaging capability, it provides high statistics signal for each GRB event, because of its large effective area. Results. We classify all isolated excesses in the SPI-ACS count rate into three types: short spikes produced by cosmic rays, GRBs and Solar flare induced events. We find some ∼1500 GRB-like events in the 10 yr exposure. A significant fraction of the GRB-like events identified in SPI-ACS occur in coincidence with triggers of other gamma-ray telescopes and could be considered as confirmed GRBs. We study the distribution of durations of the GRBs detected by SPI-ACS and find that the peak of the distribution of long GRBs is at ≃20 s, i.e. somewhat shorter than for the long GRBs detected by BATSE. Contrary to the BATSE observation, the population of short GRBs does not have any characteristic timescale. Instead, the distribution of durations extends as a powerlaw to the shortest timescale accessible for SPI-ACS, ≤50 ms. We also find that a large fraction of long GRBs has a characteristic variability timescale of the order of 1 s. We discuss the possible origin of this timescale. © 2012 ESO.