Fermi GBM Science

GBM X-ray Burst Search

The Fermi Gamma Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) is an all sky gamma-ray monitor well known in the gamma-ray burst community. Although GBM excels in detecting the hard, bright extragalactic GRBs, its sensitivity above 8 keV and all-sky view make it an excellent instrument for the detection of rare, short-lived Galactic transients. In March 2010, we initiated a systematic search for transients using GBM data. We conclude this phase of the search by presenting a 3 year catalog of 1084 X-ray bursts whose results are detailed in the three tables below. Using spectral analysis, location and spatial distributions we classified the 1084 events into 752 thermonuclear X-ray bursts, 267 transient events from accretion flares and X-ray pulses, and 65 untriggered gamma-ray bursts. All thermonuclear bursts have peak blackbody temperatures broadly consistent with photospheric radius expanison (PRE) bursts. We find an average rate of 1.4 PRE bursts per day, integrated over all Galactic bursters within about 10 kpc. These include 33 and 10 bursts from the ultra-compact X-ray binaries 4U~0614+09 and 2S~0918-549, respectively. These results are preliminary. Please contact Peter Jenke for further information.


GBM-related X-ray burst publications from the Gamma-Ray Astronomy team are listed here.

Type 1 X-ray Bursts tXRBs

Events Associated with Swift_J181723.1-164300

Untriggered Gamma Ray Bursts uGRBs

Accretion Powered Flares and X-ray Pulses aFXBs

Author: Peter Jenke
Responsible Manager: Steve Elrod
Site Curator: Peter Jenke