Related papers: REM - Rapid Eye Mount. A fast slewing robotized in…

ECLAIRs is the next space borne instrument that will be fully dedicated to multi-wavelength studies of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). It consists of a coded mask telescope with a wide (~2 sr) field of view, made of 6400 CdTe pixels (~1000 cm^2),…

The prompt emission of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) is still an outstanding question in the study of these cataclysmic events. Part of what makes GRBs difficult to study is how unique each event seems to be. However, aggregating many GRB…

The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) mission concept is optimized for study of high-z GRBs as probes of the early Universe. With a High Energy Telescope (HET) incorporating a 4.5m^2 5-600keV (CZT; 0.6mm pixels) detector…

The spectrometer SPI, one of the two main instruments of the INTEGRAL spacecraft, has strong capabilities in the field of Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) detections. In its 16 deg field of view (FoV) SPI is able to trigger and to localize GRBs with…

Polarimetry of Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) afterglows in the last few years has been considered one of the most effective tool to probe the geometry, energetic, dynamics and the environment of GRBs. We report some of the most recent results and…

The most powerful cosmic engines in our universe are fueled by compact objects. These objects accrete large amounts of material and eject matter in the form of jets. Recent groundbreaking discoveries of gravitational waves from merging…

The origin of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has been enigmatic since their discovery. The situation improved dramatically in 1997, when the rapid availability of precise coordinates for the bursts allowed the detection of faint optical and radio…

Reverberation mapping (RM) is one of the most efficient ways to investigate the broad-line region around the central supermassive black holes of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). A common way of performing the RM is to perform a long term…

Lobster-ISS is an X-ray all-sky monitor experiment selected by ESA two years ago for a Phase A study (now almost completed) for a future flight (2009) aboard the Columbus Exposed Payload Facility of the International Space Station. The main…

The first Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) catalog presented by the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT) collaboration includes 28 GRBs, detected above 100 MeV over the first three years since the launch of the Fermi mission. However, more than 100 GRBs…

We predict the redshift distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) assuming that they trace the cosmic star formation history. We find that a fraction >~50% of all GRBs on the sky originate at a redshift z >~5, even though the fraction of the…

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…

GRBs are expected to occur at redshifts far higher than the highest quasar redshifts so far detected. And unlike quasars, GRB afterglows may provide "clean" probes of the epoch of reionization because no complications (such as the presence…

The best measure of the Universe should be done using a standard "ruler" at any redshift. Type Ia Supernovae (SN Ia) probe the universe up to z$\sim$1.5, while the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) primary anisotropies concern basically…

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are among the most powerful sources in the Universe: they emit up to 10^54 erg in the hard X-ray band in few tens of seconds. The cosmological origin of GRBs has been confirmed by several spectroscopic measurements…

Two classes of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), corresponding to the short/hard and the long/soft events, with a putative intermediate class, are typically considered in the observer frame. However, when considering GRB characteristics in the…

Gamma-ray burst (GRB) observations at very high energies (VHE, E > 100 GeV) can impose tight constraints on some GRB emission models. Many GRB afterglow models predict a VHE component similar to that seen in blazars and plerions, in which…

The Gamma-Ray Imager (GRI) is a novel mission concept that will provide an unprecedented sensitivity leap in the soft gamma-ray domain by using for the first time a focusing lens built of Laue diffracting crystals. The lens will cover an…

The Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) seeks to measure simultaneous and early afterglow optical emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). A search for optical counterparts to six GRBs with localization errors of 1 square…

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are a mixed class of sources consisting of, at least, the long duration and short-hard subclasses, the X-ray flashes, and the low-luminosity GRBs. In all cases, the release of enormous amounts of energy on a short…