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Oral PresentationUsing Gamma Ray Burst to Estimate Luminosity DistancesShanel DealAdvisor: Peter Garnavich, Dept. of Physics, University of Notre DameGamma ray bursts (GRBs) are short flashes of gamma-rays that occur in star forming regions ofgalaxies. In the early 2000s, a correlation between the isotropic equivalent energy radiated by thegamma ray burst and the spectral peak energy was found. This is now known as the AmatiRelation. With this correlation GRBs could be used as cosmic standard candles. GRBs distancescan be estimated by using the calculated isotropic energy and the observed fluence with theinverse-square law. We used the NASA Swift database to identify approximately 150 gammaray bursts with known redshifts. From the database, we collected the duration, fluence, and theBand Function parameters such as alpha, beta, and the peak energy. We fitted a linear relationbetween the spectral peak energy and the isotropic energy to test the Amati Relation. We see arough correlation with scatter and many GRBs fall far from the Amati Relation. We also appliedthe inverse-square law test. Our results suggest that the Amati Relation will not provide reliabledistances to GRBs but other methods of estimating luminosity distance merit further research.45