Magic upper limits on the very high energy emission from gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

During its first data cycle, between 2005 and the beginning of 2006, the fast repositioning system of the MAGIC telescope allowed the observation of nine different gamma-ray bursts as possible sources of very high energy gamma-rays. These observations were triggered by alerts from Swift, HETE-2, and INTEGRAL; they started as quickly as possible after the alerts and lasted for several minutes, with an energy threshold varying between 80 and 200 GeV, depending on the zenith angle of the burst. No evidence for gamma signals was found, and upper limits for the flux were derived for all events using the standard analysis chain of MAGIC. For the bursts with measured redshifts, the upper limits are compatible with a power-law extrapolation, when the intrinsic fluxes are evaluated taking into account the attenuation due to the scattering in the metagalactic radiation field.