Related papers: Optical Flashes and Very Early Afterglows in Wind …
Despite the pre-Swift expectation that bright optical flashes from reverse shocks would be prevalent in early-time afterglow emission, rapid response observations show this not to be the case. Although very bright at early times, some GRBs…
We report the discovery of a radio counterpart to GRB 990123. In contrast to previous well-studied radio afterglows which rise to peak flux on a timescale of a week and then decay over several weeks to months, the radio emission from this…
The reverse shock (RS) model is generally introduced to interpret the optical afterglows with the rapid rising and decaying, such as the early optical afterglow of GRB 990123 (which is also called optical flash). In this paper, we collected…
According to the internal-external shocks model for $\gamma $-ray bursts (GRBs), the GRB is produced by internal shocks within a relativistic flow while the afterglow is produced by external shocks with the ISM. We explore the early…
A long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) has been widely thought to arise from the collapse of a massive star, and it has been suggested that its ambient medium is a homogenous interstellar medium (ISM) or a stellar wind. There are two shocks…
We analyze in detail the hydrodynamics and afterglow emission of an ultrarelativistic blast wave when it expands in a density-jump medium. Such a medium is likely to appear in the vicinity of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) associated with massive…
The standard model of GRB afterglows assumes that relativistically expanding material is decelerating due to interaction with the surrounding medium. The afterglows are well described by the synchrotron radiation from a forward shock, while…
We study prompt optical emission from reverse shocks in the wind-type gamma-ray bursts. The emission is evaluated in both the thick and thin shell regimes. We discuss the angular time delay effect and the post-shock evolution of the…
The optical light-curves of GRB afterglows 990123 and 021211 exhibit a steep decay at 100--600 seconds after the burst, the decay becoming slower after about 10 minutes. We investigate two scenarios for the fast decaying early optical…
Early optical afterglows have been observed from GRB 990123, GRB 021004, and GRB 021211, which reveal rich emission features attributed to reverse shocks. It is expected that Swift will discover many more early afterglows. Here we…
Highly magnetized, rapidly rotating compact objects are widely argued as central energy sources of $\gamma$-ray bursts (GRBs). After the GRB, such a magnetar-like object may directly lose its rotational energy through some…
I review gamma-ray burst optical/multiwavelength afterglow observations since 1997, when the first counterparts to GRBs were discovered. I discuss what we have learned from multiwavelength observations of GRB afterglows in relation to the…
We analyze the stability of a relativistic double (forward/reverse) shock system which forms when the fireball of a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) impacts on the surrounding medium. We find this shock system to be stable to linear global…
We report on a complete set of early optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) obtained with the ROTSE-III telescope network from March 2005 through June 2007. This set is comprised of 12 afterglows with early optical and Swift/XRT…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are thought to result from the interaction of an extremely relativistic outflow interacting with a small amount of material surrounding the site of the explosion. Multi-wavelength observations covering the gamma-ray…
The strong optical flash observed by ROTSE, as well as the radio flare associated with GRB 990123 can be attributed to the emission of the fireball ejecta, initially heated by the reverse shock. We numerically study the evolution of an…
We present wide-band radio observations spanning from 1.4 GHz to 350 GHz of the afterglow of GRB 991216, taken from 1 to 80 days after the burst. The optical and X-ray afterglow of this burst were fairly typical and are explained by a jet…
We present a model for the early optical afterglow of GRB 021004. This burst had one of the earliest detected optical afterglows, allowing a dense optical sampling. The lightcurve was peculiar, since bright bumps were superimposed to the…
Recent observations suggest that long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows are produced by highly relativistic jets emitted in core-collapse explosions. The pre-explosive ambient medium provides a natural test for the most…
We calculate the expected spectrum and light curves of the early afterglow. For short GRBs the peak of the afterglow will be delayed, typically, by a few dozens of seconds after the burst. The x-ray and gamma-ray characteristics of this…