ARGO-YBJ constraints on very high energy emission from GRBs

Aielli, G.; Bacci, C.; Bartoli, B.; Bernardini, P.; X. J., Bi; Bleve, C.; Branchini, P.; Budano, A.; Bussino, S.; Calabrese Melcarne, A. K.; Camarri, P.; Cao, Z.; Cappa, A.; Cardarelli, R.; Catalanotti, S.; Cattaneo, C.; Celio, P.; Chen, S. Z.; Chen, Y.; Cheng, N.; Creti, P.; Cui, S. W.; Dai, B. Z.; D'Ali' Staiti, G.; Danzengluobu,; Dattoli, M.; De Mitri, I.; D'Ettorre Piazzoli, B.; De Vincenzi, M.; Di Girolamo, T.; Ding, X. H.; Di Sciascio, G.; Feng, C. F.; Feng, Zhaoyang; Feng, Zhenyong; Galeazzi, F.; Galeotti, P.; Gao, X. Y.; Gargana, R.; Gou, Q. B.; Guo, Y. Q.; H. H., He; Haibing, Hu; Hongbo, Hu; Huang, Q.; Iacovacci, M.; Iuppa, R.; James, I.; Jia, H. Y.; Labaciren,; H. J., Li; J. Y., Li; X. X., Li; Y. R., Li; Liberti, B.; Liguori, G.; Liu, C.; Liu, C. Q.; Liu, M. Y.; Liu, J.; Lu, H.; X. H., Ma; Mancarella, G.; Mari, S. M.; Marsella, G.; Martello, D.; Mastroianni, S.; Meng, X. R.; Mu, J.; Ning, C. C.; Palummo, L.; Panareo, M.; Perrone, L.; Pistilli, P.; X. B., Qu; Rossi, E.; Ruggieri, F.; Saggese, L.; Salvini, P.; Santonico, R.; Segreto, A.; Shen, P. R.; Sheng, X. D.; Shi, F.; Stanescu, C.; Surdo, A.; Tan, Y. H.; Vallania, P.; Vernetto, S.; Vigorito, C.; Wang, B.; Wang, H.; Wang, Y. G.; C. Y., Wu; H. R., Wu; Xu, B.; Xue, L.; Yan, Y. X.; Yang, H. T.; Yang, Q. Y.; Yang, X. C.; G. C., Yu; Yuan, A. F.; Zha, M.; Zhang, H. M.; Zhang, J. L.; Zhang, L.; Zhang, P.; Zhang, X. Y.; Zhang, Y.; Zhaxisangzhu,; Zhou, X. X.; Zhu, F. R.; Zhu, Q. Q.; Zizzi, G.

The ARGO-YBJ experiment is designed for very high energy gamma-astronomy and cosmic ray researches. Due to the full coverage of a large area (5600 m^2) with resistive plate chambers at a very high altitude (4300 m a.s.l.), the ARGO-YBJ detector is used to search for transient phenomena, such as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Because the ARGO-YBJ detector has a large field of view ( about 2 sr) and is operated with a high duty cycle (>90%), it is one of the best ground-based GRB surveying apparatuses. Working at a relatively high energy threshold around a few hundreds of GeV, the ARGO-YBJ detector is operated in searches for high energy GRBs following alarms set by satellite-borne observations at lower energies. In this paper, the sensitivity of the ARGO-YBJ detector for GRB detection is estimated. Upper limits to fluence with 99% confidence level for 30 GRBs inside the field of view from June 2006 to January 2009 are set in the two energy ranges 10 GeV - 100 GeV and 10 GeV-1 TeV.