Optical Afterglows and IGM Attenuation

Abstract: Because of their cosmological origin, gamma-ray burst (GRB) optical afterglows are attenuated when they pass intergalactic absorbers in the GRB line-of-sight. Without the knowledge of the number of absorbers and their physical properties, the effect of absorption on the observed magnitudes can not be determined precisely. Different methods have been applied in order to correct for this effect statistically, either using semi-analytical calculations or numerical simulations. We follow these works and present the expected magnitude corrections as a function of redshift for a set of filters most commonly used in the scientific community. The results are publically available on the web (http://igmac.fmf.uni-lj.si).