Observations of GRBs in the mm/submm range at the dawn of the ALMA era

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) generate an afterglow with an emission peaking in the millimetre and submillimeter (mm/submm) range during the first hours to days, making the study in these wavelengths of great importance. Here we give an overview of the data that has been collected for GRB observations in this wavelengths until September 2011. The total sample includes 102 GRBs, of which 88 have afterglow observations, and the rest are only host galaxy searches. The 22 detections cover the redshift range between 0.168 and 8.2 and have peak luminosities that span 2.5 orders of magnitude. With the start of the operations at ALMA, the sensitivity with respect to previous facilities has already improved by over an order of magnitude. We estimate that, once completed, ALMA will be able to detect ~98 % of the afterglows.

This proceeding is based on the work published by de Ugarte Postigo et al. (2012).