Gamma-ray burst flares: X-ray flaring. II

We present a catalog of 498 flaring periods found in gamma-ray burst (GRB) light curves taken from the online Swift X-Ray Telescope GRB Catalogue. We analyzed 680 individual light curves using a flare detection method developed and used on our UV/optical GRB Flare Catalog. This method makes use of the Bayesian Information Criterion to analyze the residuals of fitted GRB light curves and statistically determines the optimal fit to the light curve residuals in an attempt to identify any additional features. These features, which we classify as flares, are identified by iteratively adding additional 'breaks' to the light curve. We find evidence of flaring in 326 of the analyzed light curves. For those light curves with flares, we find an average number of ∼1.5 flares per GRB. As with the UV/optical, flaring in our sample is generally confined to the first 1000 s of the afterglow, but can be detected to beyond 10⁵ s. Only ∼50% of the detected flares follow the 'classical' definition of Δt/t ≤ 0.5, with many of the largest flares exceeding this value.