FUZZY CORRELATIONS OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

The origin of gamma-ray bursts is not known, both in the sense of the nature of the source emitting the radiation and literally, the position of the burst on the sky. Lacking unambiguously identified counterparts in any wave-length band studied to date, statistical approaches are required to determine the burster distance scale. Angular correlation analysis is one of the most powerful tools in this regard. However, poor detector resolution gives large localization errors, effectively beam smearing the positions. We investigate the resulting fuzzy angular correlation function and discuss the generic isotropization that smearing induces on any intrinsic clustering. In particular, we investigate the extent to which gamma-ray burst observations by the BATSE detector aboard the Gamma-Ray Observatory might recover an intrinsic source correlation.