Related papers: Off-Axis Afterglow Light Curves from High-Resoluti…
The recent transient event Swift J1644+57 has been interpreted as emission from a collimated relativistic jet, powered by the sudden onset of accretion onto a supermassive black hole following the tidal disruption of a star. Here we model…
Whether gamma-ray bursts are highly beamed or not is a very important question, since it has been pointed out that the beaming will lead to a sharp break in the afterglow light curves during the ultra-relativistic phase, with the breaking…
We present the first unrestricted, three-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamical calculations of the blob of gas associated with the jet producing a gamma-ray burst. We investigate the deceleration phase of the blob corresponding to the…
We calculate light-curves for Gamma-Ray Burst afterglows when material ejected in the explosion is confined to a jet which propagates in a medium with a power-law density profile. The observed light-curve decay steepens by a factor of…
We present a sample of 27 GRBs with detailed Swift light curves supplemented by late time Chandra observations. To answer the missing jet-break problem in general, we develop a numerical simulation based model which can be directly fit to…
The optical light curve of the energetic gamma-ray burst GRB 991216 is consistent with jet-like behavior in which a power-law decay steepens from t**(-1.22 +/- 0.04) at early times to t**(-1.53 +/- 0.05) in a gradual transition at around 2…
Using the 2.4m MDM and 8.4m Large Binocular Telescope, we observed nine GRB afterglows to systematically probe the late time behaviors of afterglows including jet breaks, flares, and supernova bumps. In particular, the LBT observations have…
We present the results for the dynamics and emission profiles of axi-symmetric numerical simulations of structured gamma-ray burst afterglow jets, computed using the relativistic moving-mesh hydrodynamics code GAMMA. We find that the…
Using the 8.4m Large Binocular Telescope, we observed six GRB afterglows from 2.8 hours to 30.8 days after the burst triggers to systematically probe the late time behaviors of afterglows including jet breaks, flares, and supernova bumps.…
Follow-up observations of large numbers of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows, facilitated by the Swift satellite, have produced a large sample of spectral energy distributions and light curves, from which the basic micro- and macrophysical…
The X-ray light-curves of the GRB afterglows monitored by Swift display one to four phases of power-law decay. In chronological order they are: the burst tail, the "hump", the standard decay, and the post jet-break decay. The large-angle…
Early multiwavelength observations offer crucial insights into the nature of the relativistic jets responsible for gamma-ray bursts and their interaction with the surrounding medium.We present data of GRB 240825A from 17 space- and…
We obtained 98 R-band and 18 B, r', i' images of the optical afterglow of GRB 060526 (z=3.21) with the MDM 1.3m, 2.4m, and the PROMPT telescopes in Cerro Tololo over the 5 nights following the burst trigger. Combining these data with other…
Some GRB afterglow light curves show significant variability, which often includes episodes of rebrightening. This was attributed in several cases to large fluctuations in the external density. Here we examine the effect of a sharp increase…
In the past few years, the improved sensitivity and cadence of wide-field optical surveys have enabled the discovery of several afterglows without associated detected gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We present the identification, observations, and…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) associated with gravitational wave events are, and will likely continue to be, viewed at a larger inclination than GRBs without gravitational wave detections. As demonstrated by the afterglow of GW170817, this…
We present broad-band observations of the afterglow and environment of the short GRB 111020A. An extensive X-ray light curve from Swift/XRT, XMM-Newton and Chandra, spanning ~100 seconds to 10 days after the burst, reveals a significant…
We show that all X-ray decay curves of GRBs measured by Swift can be fitted using one or two components both of which have exactly the same functional form comprised of an early falling exponential phase followed by a power law decay. The…
Using a sample of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows detected by both the X-Ray and the UV/Optical Telescopes (XRT and UVOT) on Swift, we modelled the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) to determine gas column densities and dust extinction…
We investigate the effect that the structure of GRB jets has on the afterglow light curves for observers located at different viewing angles, $\theta_{obs}$, from the jet symmetry axis. The largest uncertainty in the jet dynamics is the…