GCN 44095: GRB 260310A/AT2026fgk: Detection of temporal steepening in Einstein Probe X-ray data

Rahul Jayaraman (Cornell), Gaurav Waratkar (Caltech), K-Ryan Hinds (Caltech), Yogesh Wagh (LJMU), Daniel Perley (LJMU), Anna Y. Q. Ho (Cornell), S. Y. Fu (HUST), R. D. Liang, M. J. Liu, Z. X. Ling, Hui Sun, Weimin Yuan (NAO, CAS), Genevieve Schroeder (Cornell), Xander J. Hall (CMU), Michael Coughlin (UMN), Aleksandra Bochenek (LJMU), and Jesper Sollerman (Stockholm) report:

The Follow-up X-ray Telescope on board the Einstein Probe has continued to monitor the X-ray afterglow of GRB 260310A (Fermi GBM team, GCN 43951; Arya et al., GCN 43958; Jayaraman et al., GCN 43994), which is associated with the optical transient AT2026fgk (Konno et al., GCN 43974; Hinds et al., AstroNote 2026-65). 

Observations with duration ~3 ks were taken at intervals of roughly every 2 days after the initial detection of this source in X-rays (Jayaraman et al., GCN 43994). With four further epochs of data since the initial detection, we find evidence for a steepening in the X-ray light curve at around 8 ± 2 days after the burst, with the decay slope steepening from roughly –0.3 to –1.6. The photon index measured by EP remains at roughly 1.5 throughout these observations.

This steepening appears contemporaneous with an observed steepening at a similar epoch post-burst in r-band photometric data taken by the SED Machine on the Palomar P60 telescope, which will be reported in a forthcoming Circular.



Launched on January 9, 2024, the Einstein Probe is a space X-ray observatory to monitor the soft X-ray sky with X-ray follow-up capability (Yuan et al. 2022, Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics). EP is supported by the Strategic Priority Program on Space Sciénce of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Germany), and the Centre National d'études Spatiales (France).