TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 6421 SUBJECT: GRB 070518: Swift-XRT refined analysis DATE: 07/05/19 07:50:58 GMT FROM: Cristiano Guidorzi at INAF-OAB C. Guidorzi, P. Romano (Univ Bicocca&INAF-OAB), A. Moretti (INAF-OAB), S.D. Vergani (DIAS-DCU) report on behalf of the Swift team: We have analysed the first two orbits of GRB 070518 (Guidorzi et al., GCN Circ. 6415) with total observing times of 186 s in Windowed Timing mode and 4.2 ks in Photon Counting mode in the Swift XRT. The Photon Counting mode image provides a refined XRT position at RA,DEC(J200) = 254.19800, +55.29444 which is RA(J2000) = 16h 56m 47.52s Dec(J2000) = +55d 17' 40.0" with an uncertainty of 3.9 arcsec (radius, 90% containment). This is 2.5 arcsec from the initial X-ray position, 2.8 arcsec from the UVOT position (GCN Circ. 6415) and 57 arcsec from the BAT refined position (Krimm et al., GCN Circ. 6417). The XRT light curve exhibits an initial flaring behaviour up to ~T+200 s, after which a steep decay (4.7 ± 0.4) follows after the last flare, with a break at T+460 (+/- 40) s to a shallower decay (1.11 ± 0.13) up to T+11ks. We extracted two spectra from the WT data during the flaring activity, due to a strong spectral evolution. The first spectrum, from 77 s to 158 s, can be fit with an absorbed power law with a photon index of 2.3+/-0.1 and column density of (9.6+/-1.6)E20 cm^-2 significantly in excess of the Galactic value (2.2E20 cm^-2; Dickey & Lockman, 1990). The second spectrum, from 165 to 253 s, has a photon index of 2.9+/-0.1 and same column density as that of the first spectrum. The absorbed (unabsorbed) 0.3-10.0keV flux for the first spectrum is 5.1E-10 (7.2E-10) ergs cm^-2 s^-1. Assuming the source continues to decay at the same rate, we predict an XRT count rate of 6.3E-4 counts/s at T+24 hours, which corresponds to an observed (unabsorbed) flux of 2.0E-14 (2.8E-14) ergs cm^-2 s^-1. This circular is an official product of the Swift XRT team.