Related papers: Swift's Ability to Detect Gamma-Ray Bursts
I touch upon some of the discoveries made by the Swift Team during the first 18 months of operation focusing on a few critical points. In addition to the early afterglows and complete coverage of the light curves, we mention the discovery…
The BAT instrument tells the Swift satellite where to point to make immediate follow-up observations of GRBs. The science software on board must efficiently process gamma-ray events coming in at up to 34 kHz, identify rate increases that…
The dependence of Swift's detection sensitivity on a burst's temporal and spectral properties shapes the detected burst population. Using simplified models of the detector hardware and the burst trigger system I find that Swift is more…
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),…
Swift is the only observatory which, due to its unique fast-slewing capability and broad-band energy coverage, can detect outbursts from Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) from the very beginning and study their evolution…
The rapid follow-up of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows made possible by the multi-wavelength satellite Swift, launched in November 2004, has put under a microscope the GRB early post-burst behavior, This is leading to a significant…
In the introduction we give the main characteristics of the Swift mission outlining how the design was driven by the science goals and by the heritage we got from the Italian - Dutch satellite Beppo SAX. We show some of the new…
Simultaneous observations by the large number of gamma-ray burst detectors operating in the GLAST era will provide the spectra, lightcurves and locations necessary for studying burst physics and testing the putative relations between…
We have searched for the third, 'intermediate', subgroup of gamma-ray bursts among nearly 400 gamma-ray bursts observed by the Swift satellite. The standard chi^2 method and F-test were applied which give support for the existence of this…
The Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is one of 3 instruments on the Swift MIDEX spacecraft to study gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The BAT first detects the GRB and localizes the burst direction to an accuracy of 1-4 arcmin within 20 sec after the…
Swift has now completed 18 years of mission, during which it discovered thousands of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) as well as new classes of high-energy transient phenomena. Its first breakthrough result was the localization of short duration…
The WIDeField telescope for Gamma-ray burst Early Timing (WIDGET) is used for a fully automated, ultra-wide-field survey aimed at detecting the prompt optical emission associated with Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs). WIDGET surveys the HETE-2 and…
We present an analysis of early BAT and XRT data for 107 gamma--ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Swift satellite. We use these data to examine the behaviour of the X-ray light curve and propose a classification scheme for GRBs based on…
The currently accepted model for gamma-ray burst phenomena involves the violent formation of a rapidly rotating solar mass black hole. Gravitational waves should be associated with the black-hole formation, and their detection would permit…
The currently accepted model for gamma-ray burst phenomena involves the violent formation of a rapidly rotating solar-mass black hole. Gravitational waves should be associated with the black-hole formation, and their detection would permit…
It is now more than 40 years since the discovery of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and in the last two decades there has been major progress in the observations of bursts, the afterglows and their host galaxies. This recent progress has been…
We report the results of the Swift and XMM observations of the Swift-discovered long Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 060729 ($T_{90}$=115s). The afterglow of this burst was exceptionally bright in X-rays as well as at UV/Optical wavelengths showing an…
Since its launch in 2008 June, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has opened a new era in high-energy astrophysics. The unprecedented sensitivity, angular resolution and effective area of the Large Area Telescope on board Fermi, together…
The detection of flares with the Swift satellite triggered a lot of bservational and theoretical interest in these phenomena. As a consequence a large analysis effort started within the community to characterize the phenomenon and at the…
The exhilerating results from Swift in its first year of operations have opened a new era of exploration of the high energy universe. The surge to higher redshifts of the Gamma-ray bursts now imaged with increased sensitivity establishes…