Related papers: The Swift X-Ray Telescope: Status and Performance
The unrivalled, extreme luminosities of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) make them the favored beacons for sampling the high redshift Universe. To employ GRBs to study the cosmic terrain -- e.g., star and galaxy formation history -- GRB luminosities…
We present and discuss the results of an extensive observational campaign devoted to GRB071010A, a long-duration gamma-ray burst detected by the Swift satellite. This event was followed for almost a month in the optical/near-infrared (NIR)…
In the set of 236 GRB afterglows observed by Swift between January 2005 and March 2007, we identify 30 X-ray light-curves whose power-law fall-off exhibit a steepening ("break") at 0.1-10 day after trigger, to a decay steeper than t^{-1.5}.…
Despite a rich diversity in observational properties, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be divided into two broad categories based on their duration and spectral hardness -- the long-soft and the short-hard GRBs. The discovery of afterglows from…
The extreme luminosity of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows means they are detectable, in principle, to very high redshifts. Although the redshift distribution of GRBs is difficult to determine, due to incompleteness of present…
We present the first results of a program to systematically study the optical-to-X-ray spectral energy distribution (SED) of Swift GRB afterglows with known redshift. The goal is to study the properties of the GRB explosion and of the…
Many authors have predicted very-high-energy (VHE; E > 100 GeV) emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) both during the prompt phase and during the multi-component afterglow. To date, however, there has been no definitive detection of such…
The HETE-2 mission has been highly productive. It has observed more than 250 GRBs so far. It is currently localizing 25 - 30 GRBs per year, and has localized 43 GRBs to date. Twenty-one of these localizations have led to the detection of…
The new and extreme population of GRBs detected by Fermi-LAT shows several new features in high energy gamma-rays that are providing interesting and unexpected clues into GRB prompt and afterglow emission mechanisms. Over the last 6 years,…
We study an extensive sample of 87 GRBs for which there are well sampled and simultaneous optical and X-ray light-curves. We extract the cleanest possible signal of the afterglow component, and compare the temporal behaviors of the X-ray…
Context. After the launch of the Swift satellite, the Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) optical light-curve smoothness paradigm has been questioned thanks to the faster and better sampled optical follow-up, which has unveiled a very complex behaviour.…
We discuss the potential of the eROSITA telescope on board the \emph{Spectrum-X-Gamma} observatory to detect gamma-ray burst (GRB) X-ray afterglows during its 4-year all-sky survey. The expected rate of afterglows associated with…
The repointing time of the XRT instrument on the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory satellite has posed challenges in observing and studying the early X-ray emissions within $\approx40$ s after a gamma-ray burst (GRB) trigger. To address this…
X-Ray Flashes (XRFs) are soft gamma-ray bursts whose nature is not clear. Their soft spectrum can be due to cosmological effects (high redshift), an off-axis view of the jet or can be intrinsic to the source. We use SWIFT observations to…
Context. X-shooter is the first second-generation instrument to become operative at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). It is a broad-band medium-resolution spectrograph designed with gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow spectroscopy as one of…
We jointly analyze the gamma-ray burst (GRB) data observed with BAT and XRT on board the Swift mission to present a global view on the internal energy dissipation processes in GRBs, including precursors, prompt gamma-ray emission, extended…
The discovery by BeppoSAX and coordinated ground-based observations of persistent X-ray, visible and radio counterparts to GRB has successfully concluded a search begin in 1973. The problem of explaining the mechanisms of GRB and their…
We present observations of the early X-ray emission for a sample of 40 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) obtained using the Swift satellite for which the narrow-field instruments were pointed at the burst within 10 minutes of the trigger. Using data…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) show diverse X-ray afterglow light-curves, including breaks and plateaus, whose physical origins remain debated. Previous claims linked high-energy ($E \ge 100$ MeV) detection to X-ray afterglow complexity or plateau…
We have performed a systematic study of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), which have various values in the peak energy of the ${\nu}F_{\nu}$ spectrum of the prompt emission, $E_{{\rm peak}}$, observed by \textsl{Swift}/BAT and \textsl{Fermi}/GBM,…