The Role Of The Batse Instrument Response In Creating The Grb E-Peak Distribution

Of the properties possessed by gamma-rag bursts, the most constraining on the physics of the emission region is the narrow distribution of E-peak (E-p), the photon energy at which the vF(v) curve is a maximum. The importance of this observation for gamma-rag burst theory has motivated us to study the influence of BATSE instrumental effects on the observed distribution. Two aspects of measuring the E-peak distribution were investigated: the derivation of the Value of E-peak for a given burst, and the triggering of the BATSE instrument on bursts of different E-peak. We find that instrumental effects cannot account for the observed distribution. We use a log-normal E-peak; distribution to model the observations, finding the number of bursts per unit decade must decrease rapidly as one moves away from the observed peal; of the E-peak distribution for burst spectra that are normalized to a constant total flux.