Evidence for anisotropy in the distribution of short-lived gamma-ray bursts

Measurements of the two-point angular correlation function w(θ) for 407 short gamma-ray bursts collected in the Current BATSE Catalogue reveal a ∼2σ deviation from isotropy on angular scales 0 ∼ 2°-4°. Such an anisotropy is not observed in the distribution of long gamma-ray bursts and hints to the presence of repeated bursts for up to ∼13 per cent of the sources under exam. However, the available data cannot exclude the signal as due to the presence of large-scale structure. Under this assumption, the amplitude of the observed w(θ) is compatible with those derived for different populations of galaxies up to redshifts ≃0.5, a result that suggests short gamma-ray bursts to be relatively local sources.

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