Cosmological Uses of Gamma-Ray Bursts
Abstract
Studies of the cosmic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their host galaxies are starting to provide interesting or even unique new insights in observational cosmology. GRBs represent a new way of identifying a population of star-forming galaxies at cosmological redshifts. GRB hosts are broadly similar to the normal field galaxy populations at comparable redshifts and magnitudes, and indicate at most a mild luminosity evolution out to z ~ 1.5 - 2. GRB optical afterglows seen in absorption provide a powerful new probe of the ISM in dense, central regions of their host galaxies, complementary to the traditional studies using QSO absorbers. Some GRB hosts are heavily obscured, and provide a new way to select a population of cosmological sub-mm sources, and a novel constraint on the total obscured fraction of star formation over the history of the universe. Finally, detection of GRB afterglows at z > 6 may provide a unique way to probe the primordial star formation, massive IMF, early IGM, and chemical enrichment at the end of the cosmic reionization era.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0302004,
title = {Cosmological Uses of Gamma-Ray Bursts},
author = {S. G. Djorgovski and S. R. Kulkarni and D. A. Frail and F. A. Harrison and J. S. Bloom and E. Berger and P. A. Price and D. Fox and A. M. Soderberg and R. Sari and S. Yost and A. A. Mahabal and S. M. Castro and R. Goodrich and F. Chaffee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0302004},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
An invited review, to appear in: "Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Afterglow Era: 3rd Workshop", ASPCS, in press; LaTeX file, 8 pages, 1 eps figure, style files included