EGRET Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts

Session 74 -- Gamma-Ray Bursts
Oral presentation, Thursday, 2:30-4:00, Zellerbach Auditorium Room

[74.04] EGRET Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts

B.L. Dingus, P.Sreekumar (USRA/GSFC), D.L. Bertsch, C.E. Fichtel, R.C. Hartman, S.D. Hunter, D.J. Thompson (NASA/GSFC), G. Kanbach, H.A. Mayer-Hasselwander, C. von Montigny, M. Sommer (MPI), Y.C. Lin, P.L. Nolan, P.F. Michelson, J.Chiang (Stanford), D.A. Kniffen (Hampden-Sydney), J.R. Mattox (CSC/GSFC), E.J. Schneid (Grumman), C. Kouveliotou (USRA/MSFC), G.J. Fishman (MSFC), K. Hurley (UC Berkeley)

The intense gamma-ray burst of January 31, 1993 was detected by the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) on the Compton Observatory. Sixteen gamma-rays above 30 MeV were imaged in the telescope. Two of these gamma-rays have energies of approximately 1 GeV, and the 5 bin spectrum of the 16 events is fit by a power law of photon spectral index $-2.0\pm0.4\,$. These gamma-rays were detected over a 25 second time interval. This observation increases by an order of magnitude the energy of gamma-rays detected in a gamma-ray burst and places severe constraints on the many theoretical models of gamma-ray bursts. \

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