A constraint on the distance scale to cosmological gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

If γ-ray bursts have a cosmological origin, the sources are expected to trace the large-scale structure of luminous matter in the universe. I use a new likelihood method that compares the counts-in-cells distribution of γ-ray bursts in the BATSE 3B catalog with that expected from the known large-scale structure of the universe, in order to place a constraint on the distance scale to cosmological bursts. I find, at the 95% confidence level, that the comoving distance to the “edge” of the burst distribution is greater than 630 h−1 Mpc (z>0.25), and that the nearest burst is farther than 40 h−1 Mpc. The median distance to the nearest burst is 170 h−1 MPc, implying that the total energy released in γ-rays during a burst event is of order 3×1051 h−2 erg. None of the bursts that have been observed by BATSE are in nearby galaxies, nor is a signature from the Coma cluster or the “Great Wall” likely to be seen in the data at present.