X-ray afterglow correlation analysis

I developed a data processing pipeline to retrieve the light curves for ~1900 GRBs observed by the Swift X-ray Telescope since its launch in 2004, identify and select events with a measured redshift and adequate brightness, and analyse these for the luminosity–decay correlation. That is, between the intrinsic brightness at 200 s in the rest frame and the average rate of decay from this time. Given the large sample of 427 selected afterglows, I separated GRBs into subsamples and discovered the correlation shows a significant reduction in scatter, and increase in strength, in a subset of long GRB light curves with high cadence and a late end time (see below).