Previous | Session 159 | Next
A. S. Friedman (Harvard-CfA), J. S. Bloom (Harvard-CfA / UC Berkeley), cosmicbooms.net Team
Despite recent claims to the contrary, we show that the use of \gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) for cosmography, which has many potential advantages over other methods, is not yet competitive with results from Type Ia supernovae, large scale structure, or the CMB. We examine the standardizability of GRB energies using the correlation between the apparent geometry-corrected energies and the peak in the prompt burst spectrum. We briefly discuss the detailed formalism for constructing a GRB standard candle and a self-consistent GRB Hubble Diagram and demonstrate that pre-Swift, small number statistics and significant outliers severely weaken the strength of the correlation and any utility for cosmological parameter determination. Finally, we highlight the latest results from Swift and discuss the addition of further corrections to the GRB standard candle. (A.S.F. acknowledges support from an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.)
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://www.cosmicbooms.net. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: afriedman@cfa.harvard.edu
Previous | Session 159 | Next
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.