Preliminary investigation to test extragalactic hypothesis for gamma-ray bursts

Summary Recent observations of CGRO satellite challenged the almost universally accepted galactic origin of gamma-ray bursts and have revived the extragalactic, cosmological models. This hypothesis should imply some variations of the morphological and energetic characteristics of the weaker events to which we think the farthest ones might belong. The existence of such variations due to the cosmological red-shift should be tested. In this paper we examine the possible correlations between temporal morphology of the gamma-ray bursts, peak intensity and photon energy spectra when the red-shift effects do not yet occur. We examine the peak intensities and the energy spectral-hardness distributionversus rise times for events observed by previous space missions, with a logN-logS shape free of cosmological effects. The results of this analysis suggest that a wide range of values of the temporal and spectral characteristic parameters is an intrinsic property of the sources. Paper presented at the 6th Cosmic Physics National Conference, Palermo, 3–7 November 1992.