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Short duration gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) are thought to be related to theviolent merger of compact objects, such as neutron stars or black holes, whichmakes them promising sources of gravitational waves. The detection of a'kilonova'-like signature associated to the Swift-detected GRB 130603B hassuggested that this event is the result of a compact object merger. Ourknowledge on SGRB has been, until now, mostly based on the absence of supernovasignatures and the analysis of the host galaxies to which they cannot always besecurely associated. Further progress has been significantly hampered by thefaintness and rapid fading of their optical counterparts (afterglows), whichhas so far precluded spectroscopy of such events. Afterglow spectroscopy is thekey tool to firmly determine the distance at which the burst was produced,crucial to understand its physics, and study its local environment. Here wepresent the first spectra of a prototypical SGRB afterglow in which bothabsorption and emission features are clearly detected. Together withmultiwavelength photometry we study the host and environment of GRB 130603B.From these spectra we determine the redshift of the burst to be z =0.3565+/-0.0002, measure rich dynamics both in absorption and emission, and asubstantial line of sight extinction of A_V = 0.86+/-0.15 mag. The GRB waslocated at the edge of a disrupted arm of a moderately star forming galaxy withnear-solar metallicity. Unlike for most long GRBs (LGRBs), N_HX / A_V isconsistent with the Galactic ratio, indicating that the explosion site differsfrom those found in LGRBs. The merger is not associated with the moststar-forming region of the galaxy; however, it did occur in a dense region,implying a rapid merger or a low natal kick velocity for the compact objectbinary.

Spectroscopy of the short-hard GRB 130603B: The host galaxy and environment of a compact object merger