A statistical treatment of the gamma-ray burst "no host galaxy" problem: II. Energies of standard candle bursts

With the discovery that the afterglows after some bursts are coincident wit h faint galaxies, the search for host galaxies is no longer a test of wheth er bursts are at cosmological distances, but rather a test of particular co smological models. The methodology we developed to investigate the original "no host galaxy" problem is equally valid for testing different cosmologic al models and is applicable to the galaxies coincident with optical transie nts. We apply this methodology to a family of models where we vary the tota l energy of standard candle bursts. We find that total isotropic energies o f E < 2 x 10(52) ergs are ruled out, while E similar to 10(53) ergs is favo red.