Prompt Emission and Early Optical Afterglow of Very-high-energy Detected GRB 201015A and GRB 201216C: Onset of the External Forward Shock

We present a detailed prompt emission and early optical afterglow analysis of the two very-high-energy (VHE) detected bursts GRB 201015A and GRB 201216C, and their comparison with a subset of similar bursts. Time-resolved spectral analysis of multistructured GRB 201216C using the Bayesian binning algorithm revealed that during the entire duration of the burst, the low-energy spectral index (alpha (pt)) remained below the limit of the synchrotron line of death. However, statistically some of the bins supported the additional thermal component. Additionally, the evolution of spectral parameters showed that both the peak energy (E (p)) and alpha (pt) tracked the flux. These results were further strengthened using the values of the physical parameters obtained by synchrotron modeling of the data. Our earliest optical observations of both bursts using the F/Photometric Robotic Atmospheric Monitor Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos and Burst Observer and Optical Transient Exploring System robotic telescopes displayed a smooth bump in their early optical light curves, consistent with the onset of the afterglow due to synchrotron emission from an external forward shock. Using the observed optical peak, we constrained the initial bulk Lorentz factors of GRB 201015A and GRB 201216C to Gamma(0) = 204 and Gamma(0) = 310, respectively. The present early optical observations are the earliest known observations constraining outflow parameters and our analysis indicate that VHE detected bursts could have a diverse range of observed luminosity within the detectable redshift range of present VHE facilities.

Automated summary

This study presents a detailed analysis of the prompt emission and early optical afterglow of two very-high-energy (VHE) detected bursts, GRB 201015A and GRB 201216C. The early optical observations reveal a smooth bump in the light curves, indicating the onset of synchrotron emission from an external forward shock.