Prompt optical emission from gamma-ray bursts with multiple timescale variability of central engine activities

Complete high-resolution light curves of GRB 080319B observed by Swift present an opportunity for detailed temporal analysis of prompt optical emission. With a two-component distribution of initial Lorentz factors, we simulate the dynamical process of shells being ejected from the central engine in the framework of the in- ternal shock model. The emitted radiations are decomposed into different frequency ranges for a temporal correlation analysis between the light curves in different energy bands. The resulting prompt optical and gamma-ray emissions show similar tempo- ral profiles, with both showing a superposition of a component with slow variability and a component with fast variability, except that the gamma-ray light curve is much more variable than its optical counterpart. The variability in the simulated light curves and the strong correlation with a time lag between the optical and gamma-ray emis- sions are in good agreement with observations of GRB 080319B. Our simulations suggest that the variations seen in the light curves stem from the temporal structure of the shells injected from the central engine of gamma-ray bursts. Future observations with high temporal resolution of prompt optical emission from GRBs, e.g., by UFFO- Pathfinder and SVOM-GWAC, will provide a useful tool for investigating the central engine activity.

Extremely metal-poor star candidates in the SDSS

For a sample of metal-poor stars （-3.3 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤-2.2） that have highresolution spectroscopic abundance determinations, we have measured equivalent widths of the Ca II K, Mg I b and near-infrared Ca II triplet lines using low-resolution spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey （SDSS）, calculated effective temperatures from （g - z）o color, deduced stellar surface gravities by fitting stellar isochrones, and determined metallicities based on the aforementioned quantities. Metallicities thus derived from the Ca II K line are in much better agreement with the results deter- mined from high-resolution spectra than the values given in the SDSS Data Release 7. The metallicities derived from the Mg I b lines have a large dispersion owing to the large measurement errors, whereas those deduced from the Ca II triplet lines are too high due to both non-local thermodynamical equilibrium （NLTE） effects and mea- surement errors. Abundances after correction for the NLTE effect for the Mg I b lines and Ca II triplet lines are also presented. Following this method, we have identified six candidates of ultra-metal-poor stars with [Fe/H] - -4.0 from a sample of 166 metal-poor star candidates. One of them, SDSS J102915＋172927, was recently con- firmed to be an ultra-metal-poor （[Fe/H] 〈 -4.0） star with the lowest metallicity ever measured. Follow-up high-resolution spectroscopy for the other five ultra-metal-poor stars in our sample will therefore be of great interest.