Related papers: Gamma Ray Bursts and the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Tel…
Lasting anywhere from a few milliseconds to several minutes, GRBs shine hundreds of times brighter than a typical supernova, making them briefly the brightest source of cosmic gamma-ray photons in the observable Universe. This thesis…
Gamma-ray Bursts (GRB) were discovered by satellite-based detectors as powerful sources of transient $\gamma$-ray emission. The Fermi satellite detected an increasing number of these events with its dedicated Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM),…
Gamma-ray bursts are cosmological sources emitting radiation from the gamma-rays to the radio band. Substantial observational efforts have been devoted to the study of GRBs during the prompt phase, i.e. the initial burst of high-energy…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are commonly attributed to the demise of massive stars or the merger of binary compact objects. However, their varied emission characteristics strongly imply the existence of multiple GRB classes based on progenitor…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are known to have the most relativistic jets, with initial Lorentz factors in the order of a few hundreds. Many GRBs display an early X-ray light-curve plateau, which was not theoretically expected and therefore…
Gamma-ray burst (GRB) engines are probed most intimately during the prompt gamma-ray luminous phase when the expanding blast wave is closest to the explosion center. Using GRBs 990123 and 940217 as guides, we briefly review observations of…
The typical spectra of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are discussed in the context of the compactness problem for GRB sources and how it is resolved in the popular fireball model. In particular, observational (model-independent) constraints on the…
A pedagogical derivation is presented of the ``fireball'' model of gamma-ray bursts, according to which the observable effects are due to the dissipation of the kinetic energy of a relativistically expanding wind, a ``fireball.'' The main…
Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions known, capable of outshining the rest of gamma-ray sky during their short-lived prompt emission. Their cosmological nature makes them the best tool to explore the final stages in the…
We study the properties of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), based on the assumption that they are all connected to the binary neutron star mergers, whose formation mechanism contains a large amount of uncertainty. In particular, the merger…
Fireballs are huge isotropic explosions models widely believed to explain Gamma Ray Burst, GRBs (Piran,1999); ever-new versions consider wide beamed (10^o) Jet explosions hitting external shells. On the contrary, since 1994-1998, we argued…
We examine what we regard as key observational results on GRB 970228 and GRB 970508 and show that the accumulated evidence strongly suggests that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are cosmological fireballs. We further show that the observations…
Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) fall into two classes: short-hard and long-soft bursts. The latter are now known to have X-ray and optical afterglows, to occur at cosmological distances in star-forming galaxies, and to be associated with the…
After presenting a short history of gamma-ray burst (GRB) studies, we discuss the current constraints on GRB models which follows from astronomical observations. We concentrate on the energetics of the GRBs with known redshifts and the…
Before the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope there were only a handful of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected at high energies (above 100 MeV), while several different suggestions have been made for possible high-energy emission…
Most cosmological models for gamma-ray bursts invoke the production of a ``fireball'' in a compact region, as indicated by the short time variability of the observed GRBs. The high density of $e^+e^-$ pairs in such fireballs inevitably…
We provide a comprehensive review of major developments in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts, with particular focus on the discoveries made within the last fifteen years when their true nature was uncovered. We describe the…
A hypothesis is proposed that the gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) may arise by blueshifting the emission radiation of hydrogen and helium generated during the last scattering epoch. The blueshift mechanism is provided by such a Lema\^itre -- Tolman…
Whatever the ultimate energy source of gamma-ray bursts turns out to be, the resulting sequence of physical events is likely to lead to a fairly generic, almost unavoidable scenario: a relativistic fireball that dissipates its energy after…
In relativistic strongly magnetized winds outflowing from the fast-rotating compact progenitors of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) there are three regions where powerful high-frequency emission may be generated: (i) the thermal photosphere, (ii)…