Related papers: Gamma-ray bursts: Restarting the Engine
Gamma-ray bursts are short-lived, luminous explosions at cosmological distances, thought to originate from relativistic jets launched at the deaths of massive stars. They are among the prime candidates to produce the observed cosmic rays at…
GRBs are thought to arise in relativistic blast-wave shocks at distances of 10 to 1000 AU from the point where the explosive energy is initially released. To account for the observed duration and variability of the gamma-ray emission in…
Major advances have been made in the field of gamma-ray bursts in the last two years. The successful discovery of X-ray, optical and radio afterglows, which were predicted by theory, has made possible the identification of host galaxies at…
The stellar origin of gamma-ray bursts can be explained by the rapid release of energy in a highly collimated, extremely relativistic jet. This in turn appears to require a rapidly spinning highly magnetised stellar core that collapses into…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are sudden, intense flashes of gamma-rays which, for a few blinding seconds, light up in an otherwise fairly dark gamma-ray sky. They are detected at the rate of about once a day, and while they are on, they outshine…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are short and intense bursts of $\sim$100 keV$-$1MeV photons, usually followed by long-lasting decaying afterglow emission in a wide range of electromagnetic wavelengths from radio to X-ray and, sometimes, even to GeV…
(Abridged) We interpret gamma ray bursts as relativistic, electromagnetic explosions. Specifically, we propose that they are created when a rotating, relativistic, stellar-mass progenitor loses much of its rotational energy in the form of a…
The last five years have seen growing challenges to the traditional paradigm of a core collapse supernova powered by the neutrino emission of a young proto-neutron star. Chief among these challenges are gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and the…
We propose that gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are produced by a shower of heavy blobs running into circumstellar material at highly relativistic speeds. The gamma ray emission is produced in the shocks these bullets drive into the surrounding…
Cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows seem to result from dissipation of bulk energy in relativistic outflows, but their engine has not been unambiguously identified. The engine could be a young pulsar formed from…
We identify a novel physical mechanism that may be responsible for energy release in $\gamma$-ray bursts. Radial perturbations in the neutron core, induced by its collision with collapsing outer layers during the early stages of supernova…
I briefly review magnetic effects in accretion physics, and then go on to discuss a possible central engine for gamma-ray bursts. A rotating black hole immersed in a non-axisymmetric magnetic field experiences a torque trying to align spin…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), both long and short, are explosive events whose inner engine is generally expected to be a black hole or a highly magnetic neutron star (magnetar) accreting high density matter. Recognizing the nature of GRB central…
A study of gamma rays produced when stars collapse or collide reveals details of the explosion mechanism, particularly the role of magnetic fields.
The phase-transition induced collapse of a neutron star to a more compact configuration (typically a ``strange'' star) and the subsequent core bounce is often invoked as a model for gamma-ray bursts. We present the results of numerical…
The 'event' that triggers a gamma ray burst cannot last for more than a few seconds. This is, however, long compared with the dynamical timescale of a compact stellar-mass object ($\sim 10^{-3}$ seconds). Energy is assumed to be released as…
The duration of the prompt emission of long gamma-ray bursts is generally considered to be fairly similar to the duration of the activity of the engine in the center of the progenitor star. Here, we investigate the relation between the…
Despite that gamma-ray bursts is a phenomenon quite different from accreting compact objects, it could be that their hard X-ray emission is associated with a very similar mechanism of energy dissipation. In both cases, we could deal with…
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are astronomical phenomena detected at highest energies. The gamma ray photons carry energies on the order of mega-electronovolts and arrive to us from the point-like sources that are uniformly distributed on the…
We present a set of numerical simulations of stellar explosions induced by relativistic jets emanating from a central engine sitting at the center of compact, dying stars. We explore a wide range of durations of the central engine activity,…