Related papers: Opacity Build-up in Impulsive Relativistic Sources
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to originate from ultra-relativistic winds/fireballs to avoid the "compactness problem". However, the most energetic photons in GRBs may still suffer from $\gamma-\gamma$ absorption leading to…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are brief flashes of gamma rays, considered to be the most energetic explosive phenomena in the Universe. The emission from GRBs comprises a short (typically tens of seconds) and bright prompt emission, followed by a…
The X-ray emission of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is often characterized by an initial steep decay, followed by a nearly constant emission phase (so called "plateau") which can extend up to thousands of seconds. While the steep decay is usually…
Both gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and blazars have relativistic jets pointing at a small angle from our line of sight. Several recent studies suggested that these two kinds of sources may share similar jet physics. In this work, we explore the…
X-ray flares were discovered in the afterglow phase of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) by the {\em Swift} satellite a decade ago and known as a canonical component in GRB X-ray afterglows. In this paper, we constrain the Lorentz factors of GRB…
The prompt GRB emission is thought to arise from electrons accelerated in internal shocks propagating within a highly relativistic outflow. The launch of Fermi offers the prospect of observations with unprecedented sensitivity in…
For an unsteady baryonic gamma-ray burst (GRB) outflow, the fast and slow proton shells collide with each other and produce energetic soft gamma-ray emission. If the outflow has a significant neutron component, the ultra-relativistic…
Optical observations of a sample of 12 $\gamma$-ray bright blazars from four optical data archives, AAVSO, SMARTS, Catalina, and Steward Observatory, are compiled to create densely sampled light curves spanning more than a decade. As a part…
We study the dynamics of relativistic electromagnetic explosions as a possible mechanism for the production of Gamma-Ray Bursts. We propose that a rotating relativistic stellar-mass progenitor loses much of its spin energy in the form of an…
We have developed a computer model to calculate gamma ray burst (GRB) light curves and efficiencies from the interaction of a single, thin blast wave with clouds in the external medium. Large amplitude, spiky variability occurs when the…
The site and mechanism of gamma-ray burst (GRB) prompt emission is still unknown. Although internal shocks have been widely discussed as the emission site of GRBs, evidence supporting other emission sites have been also suggested recently,…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are promising as sources of neutrinos and cosmic rays. In the internal shock scenario, blobs of plasma emitted from a central engine collide within a relativistic jet and form shocks, leading to particle acceleration…
The latest results on the sky distribution of ultra-high energy cosmic ray sources have consequences for their nature and time structure. If the sources accelerate predominantly nuclei of atomic number A and charge Z and emit continuously,…
Relativistic flows resulting from sudden explosive events upscatter ambient interstellar photons of local radiation fields. For Lorentz factor $ > 100$ and dense optical - UV radiation fields the emergent signal is a typical gamma ray…
Models where relativistic jets from merger or accretion induced collapse in compact binary systems produce cosmological gamma ray bursts (GRBs) also predict that GRBs are accompanied by delayed emission of high energy photons, TeV…
Short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to be produced by relativistic jets from mergers of neutron-stars (NS) or neutron-stars and black-holes (BH). If the Lorentz-factors $\Gamma$ of jets from compact-stellar-mergers follow a similar…
The connection between Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows is currently not well understood. Afterglow models of synchrotron emission generated by external shocks in the GRB fireball model predict emission detectable in the…
The energetics and emission mechanism of GRBs are not well understood. Here we demonstrate that the instantaneous peak flux or equivalent isotropic peak luminosity, L_iso ergs s^-1, rather than the integrated fluence or equivalent isotropic…
The variability observed in many complex gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is inconsistent with causally connected variations in a single, symmetric, relativistic shell interacting with the ambient material ("external shocks"). Rather, the symmetry…
The hard X-ray and gamma-ray phenomenology of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be explained by an external shock model where a single relativistic blast wave interacts with the surrounding medium. Besides reproducing the generic spectral…