Related papers: Effect of Dust Extinction on Gamma-ray Burst After…
We study the late-time (t>0.5 days) X-ray afterglows of nearby (z<0.5) long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) with Swift and identify a population of explosions with slowly decaying, super-soft (photon index Gamma_x>3) X-ray emission that is…
The energy requirements of gamma ray bursts have in past been poorly constrained because of three major uncertainties: The distances to bursts, the degree of burst beaming, and the efficiency of gamma ray production. The first of these has…
Observations of interstellar extinction and polarization indicate that the interstellar medium consists of aligned non-spherical dust grains which show variation in the interstellar extinction curve for wavelengths ranging from NIR to UV.…
We analyze low resolution Spitzer infrared (IR) 5-14 micron spectra of the diffuse emission toward a carefully selected sample of stars. The sample is composed of sight lines toward stars that have well determined ultraviolet (UV)…
We construct a quasar extinction curve based on the blue and red composite quasar spectra of Richards et al. (2003) prepared from the SDSS survey. This extinction curve does not show any traces of the 2200 A feature characteristic of the…
New low-resolution UV spectra of a sample of reddened OB stars in M31 were obtained with HST/STIS to study the wavelength dependence of interstellar extinction and the nature of the underlying dust grain populations. Extinction curves were…
We present results of optical broad-band and narrow-band Halpha observations of a sample of forty nearby early-type galaxies. The majority of sample galaxies are known to have dust in various forms viz. dust lanes, nuclear dust and…
I review the effects of dust, both in absorption and in emission, on the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of Local star-forming galaxies. The energy balance between the stellar light absorbed by dust at UV-optical-nearIR wavelengths and…
Observed extinction curves of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are significantly different from those observed in the Milky Way. The observations require preferential removal of small grains at the AGN environment; however, the physics for…
GRB{980519} is characterized by its rapidly declining optical and X-ray afterglows. Explanations of this behavior include models invoking a dense medium environment which makes the shock wave evolve quickly into the sub-relativistic phase,…
Dust grains grow in interstellar clouds by accretion and coagulation. In this paper, we focus on these two grain growth processes and numerically investigate how they interplay to increase the grain radii. We show that accretion efficiently…
We calculate the {\it afterglow} emission for Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) going off in an extremely low density medium, referred to as {\it naked bursts}. Our results also apply to the case where the external medium density falls off sharply at…
The unusual extinction curves of SN 2010jl provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the properties of dust formed by core-collapse supernovae. By using a series of dust models with different compositions and grain size distributions,…
We model the ~1--19$\mum$ infrared (IR) extinction curve toward the Galactic Center (GC) in terms of the standard silicate-graphite interstellar dust model. The grains are taken to have a power law size distribution with an exponential…
It is now generally accepted that long-duration gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are due to the collapse of massive rotating stars. The precise collapse process itself, however, is not yet fully understood. Strong winds, outbursts, and intense…
We calculate the magnification light curves due to stellar microlensing of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows. A GRB source appears on the sky as a thin ring which expands faster than the speed of light and is maximally magnified as it…
The afterglow emission has become the main stream of Gamma-Ray burst research since its discovery three years ago. With the distance-scale enigma solved, the study of the late-time GRB emission is now the most promising approach to disclose…
We predict the rate at which Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) afterglows should be detected in supernova searches as a function of limiting flux. Although GRB afterglows are rarer than supernovae, they are detectable at greater distances because of…
The pervasive interstellar dust grains provide significant insights to understand the formation and evolution of the stars, planetary systems, and the galaxies, and may harbor the building blocks of life. One of the most effective way to…
I discuss some theoretical expectations for the synchrotron emission from a relativistic blast-wave interacting with the ambient medium, as a model for GRB afterglows, and compare them with observations. An afterglow flux evolving as a…