Measuring cosmological parameters with a luminosity–time correlation of gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), as a possible probe to extend the Hubble diagram to high redshifts, have attracted much attention recently. In this paper, we select two samples of GRBs that have a plateau phase in X-ray afterglow. One is short GRBs (SGRBs) with plateau phases dominated by magnetic dipole (MD) radiations. The other is long GRBs (LGRBs) with gravitational wave (GW) dominated plateau phases. These GRBs can be well standardized using the correlation between the plateau luminosity L0 and the end time of plateau tb. The so-called circularity problem is mitigated by using the observational Hubble parameter data and Gaussian process method. The calibrated L0 – tb correlations are also used to constrain Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) and w(z) = w0 models. Combining the MD–LGRBs sample from Wang et al. (2021) and the MD–SGRBs sample, we find $\Omega _{\mathrm{ m}} = 0.33_{-0.09}^{+0.06}$ and ΩΛ = $1.06_{-0.34}^{+0.15}$ excluding systematic uncertainties in the non-flat ΛCDM model. Adding Type Ia supernovae from Pantheon sample, the best-fitting results are w0 = $-1.11_{-0.15}^{+0.11}$ and Ωm = $0.34_{-0.04}^{+0.05}$ in the w = w0 model. These results are in agreement with the ΛCDM model. Our result supports that selection of GRBs from the same physical mechanism is crucial for cosmological purposes.