A New Search Pipeline for Short Gamma Ray Bursts in Fermi/GBM Data -- A 50% Increase in the Number of Detections

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Main Authors: Perera, Ariel, Zackay, Barak, Venumadhav, Tejaswi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Perera, Ariel
Zackay, Barak
Venumadhav, Tejaswi
author_facet Perera, Ariel
Zackay, Barak
Venumadhav, Tejaswi
contents In this paper, we present the development and the results of a new search pipeline for short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) in the publicly available data from the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on board the Fermi satellite. This pipeline uses rigorous statistical methods that are designed to maximize the information extracted from the Fermi/GBM detectors. Our approach differs substantially from existing search efforts in several aspects: The pipeline includes the construction of template banks, Poisson matched filtering, background estimation, background misestimation correction, automatic routines to filter contaminants, statistical estimation of the signal location and a quantitative estimator of the signal probability to be of a cosmological, terrestrial, or solar origin. Our analysis also includes operating the pipeline on "time-slided" copies of the data, which allows exact significance assessment and $p_{\text{astro}}$ computation, akin to the state-of-the-art gravitational waves (GW) data analysis pipelines. Depending on the spectral properties of the bursts, our pipeline achieves a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement by a factor of 2 to 15 over the onboard GBM triggering algorithm. This enhancement increases the detectable volume for sGRBs and results in an approximate 50% increase in sGRB detections in the 2014 GBM dataset. As a further consequence of the sensitivity increase, we detect hundreds of soft gamma-ray flares of galactic origin. This improved sensitivity enhances the chances of detecting fainter, off-axis GRBs that would likely fall below the standard triggering thresholds. Applying this pipeline to the full GBM archive is expected to expand further the joint sGRB-GW detection volume.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_05739
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A New Search Pipeline for Short Gamma Ray Bursts in Fermi/GBM Data -- A 50% Increase in the Number of Detections
Perera, Ariel
Zackay, Barak
Venumadhav, Tejaswi
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
In this paper, we present the development and the results of a new search pipeline for short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) in the publicly available data from the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on board the Fermi satellite. This pipeline uses rigorous statistical methods that are designed to maximize the information extracted from the Fermi/GBM detectors. Our approach differs substantially from existing search efforts in several aspects: The pipeline includes the construction of template banks, Poisson matched filtering, background estimation, background misestimation correction, automatic routines to filter contaminants, statistical estimation of the signal location and a quantitative estimator of the signal probability to be of a cosmological, terrestrial, or solar origin. Our analysis also includes operating the pipeline on "time-slided" copies of the data, which allows exact significance assessment and $p_{\text{astro}}$ computation, akin to the state-of-the-art gravitational waves (GW) data analysis pipelines. Depending on the spectral properties of the bursts, our pipeline achieves a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement by a factor of 2 to 15 over the onboard GBM triggering algorithm. This enhancement increases the detectable volume for sGRBs and results in an approximate 50% increase in sGRB detections in the 2014 GBM dataset. As a further consequence of the sensitivity increase, we detect hundreds of soft gamma-ray flares of galactic origin. This improved sensitivity enhances the chances of detecting fainter, off-axis GRBs that would likely fall below the standard triggering thresholds. Applying this pipeline to the full GBM archive is expected to expand further the joint sGRB-GW detection volume.
title A New Search Pipeline for Short Gamma Ray Bursts in Fermi/GBM Data -- A 50% Increase in the Number of Detections
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05739