English

The Role of Dust in GRB Afterglows

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

We show that the clumpy structure of star-forming regions can naturally explain the fact that 50-70% of GRB afterglows are optical``dark.'' We also show that dust echos from the GRB and its afterglow, produced by the clumpy structure of the star-forming region in which the GRB occurs, can lead to temporal variability and peaks in the NIR, optical, and UV lightcurves of GRB afterglows.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0107551,
  title  = {The Role of Dust in GRB Afterglows},
  author = {Donald Q. Lamb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0107551},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

To appear in Procs. of Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Afterglow Era: 2nd Workshop, 3 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX