Photometry of the afterglow of GRB 130831A

Very important clues, however, can be inferred by studying the afterglows of these events. We present optical and X-ray observations of GRB 130831A obtained by Swift, Chandra, Skynet, Reionization And Transients Infra-Red camera, Maidanak, International Scientific Optical-Observation Network, Nordic Optical Telescope, Liverpool Telescope and Gran Telescopio Canarias.

This burst shows a steep drop in the X-ray light curve at ~10^5^ s after the trigger, with a power-law decay index of {alpha}~6. Such a rare behaviour cannot be explained by the standard forward shock (FS) model and indicates that the emission, up to the fast decay at 10^5^ s, must be of "internal origin", produced by a dissipation process within an ultrarelativistic outflow. We propose that the source of such an outflow, which must produce the X-ray flux for ~1 d in the cosmological rest frame, is a newly born magnetar or black hole.