The Optical Afterglow of GRB 011211
Abstract
We present early-time optical photometry and spectroscopy of the optical afterglow of the gamma-ray burst GRB 011211. The spectrum contains several narrow metal lines which are consistent with the burst occurring at a redshift of 2.140 +/- 0.001. The optical afterglow decays as a power law with a slope of 0.83 +/- 0.04 for approximately the first two days after the burst at which time there is evidence for a break. The slope after the break is greater than approximately 1.4. There is evidence for rapid variations in the R-band light approximately 0.5 days after the burst, which suggests that there are density fluctuations near the GRB on spatial scales of approximately 30 to 200 AU. The magnitude of the break in the light curve, and the observed fluence, suggest that the burst expanded into an ambient medium that is homogeneous on large scales with a local particle density between approximately 0.1 and 10 per cubic cm. The total energy in the burst was 1.6-2.4 x 10^50 erg, consistent with the ``standard'' value of (5 +/- 2) x 10^50 erg. Comparing the observed color of the optical afterglow with predictions of the standard beaming model suggests that the rest-frame V-band extinction in the host galaxy is less than approximately 0.03 mag.Keywords
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