2025/08/20 by Zhou, Yu-Qi, Shuang-Xi Yi, Yupeng Yang +10
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.14467
openalex publication_date 2025/08/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) serve as important cosmological probes, whose X-ray afterglow light curves (LCs) may exhibit a plateau phase (with temporal slope α between 0 and 0.5) that may originate from magnetar energy injection. Similar to Type Ia Supernovae, GRBs with a common physical origin can be used as standardizable candles for cosmological studies. However, observational gaps in GRB light curves introduce significant uncertainties in plateau parameter estimation, thereby affecting cosmological constraints. In this work, we employ a stochastic reconstruction technique to reconstruct the X-ray afterglow LCs for 35 GRB samples exhibiting plateau features, generating 50 simulated data points for each LC. Using the reconstructed LCs, we calibrate three luminosity correlations: the L0-tb, L0-tb-Ep,i, and L0-tb-Eγ,iso relation, which are then applied to constrain both flat and non-flat ΛCDM cosmological models. The main results include: (i) the L0-tb relation yields a slope b ≈ -1, supporting a constant magnetar energy injection rate; (ii) light curve reconstruction has limited impact on cosmological parameter constraints; (iii) for the flat ΛCDM model constrained by the L0-tb-Ep,i relation, the precision of Ωm improves by 6.25%; For the non-flat ΛCDM model constrained by the L0-tb-Ep,i relation, the precision of ΩΛ improves by 1.01%. Our findings suggest that increasing the number of LC data points provides limited improvement to cosmological constraints, while expanding the sample size of GRBs with identical physical origins may be more crucial.