Identifying Black Hole Central Engines in Gamma-Ray Bursts

Abstract

The nature of the gamma-ray burst (GRB) central engine still remains an enigma. Entities widely believed to be capable of powering the extreme jets are magnetars and black holes. The maximum rotational energy that is available in a millisecond magnetar to form a jet is ∼1052 erg. We identify eight long GRBs whose jet-opening angle-corrected energetics of the prompt emission episode are >1052 erg with high confidence level and, therefore, their central engines are expected to be black holes. The majority of these GRBs present significant emission in the sub-GeV energy range. The X-ray afterglow light curves of these bursts do not show any shallow decay behavior such as a plateau; however, a few cases exhibit flares and multiple breaks instead of a single power-law decay. For a minimum mass of the black hole (∼2 M⊙), we find the efficiency of producing a jet from its rotational energy to range between 2% and 270%. Highly energetic jets requiring high efficiencies implies that either the mass of these black holes are much larger or there are, in addition, other sources of energy that power the jet. By considering the Blandford–Znajek mechanism of jet formation, we estimate the masses of these black holes to range between ∼2 and 60 M⊙. Some of the lighter black holes formed in these catastrophic events are likely candidates to lie in the mass-gap region (2–5 M⊙).