Related papers: GRB efficiency and Possible Physical Processes Sha…
We present a comprehensive statistical analysis of Swift X-ray light-curves of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), with more than 650 GRBs. Two questions drive this effort: (1) Does the X-ray emission retain any kind of memory of the prompt phase? (2)…
The shock model has successfully explained the observed behaviors of afterglows from long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Here we use it to investigate the so-called early afterglows from short GRBs, which arises from blast waves that are not…
The unique capability of the Swift satellite to perform a prompt and autonomous slew to a newly detected Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) has yielded the discovery of interesting new properties of GRB X-ray afterglows, such as the steep early…
Observations of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows have long provided the most detailed information about the origin of this spectacular phenomena. The model that is most commonly used to extract physical properties of the event from the…
We review the fireball shock model of gamma-ray burst prompt and early afterglow emission in light of rapid follow-up measurements made and enabled by the multi-wavelength Swift satellite. These observations are leading to a reappraisal and…
The detection of delayed emission in X-ray, optical and radio wave length, ``afterglow'', following a gamma-ray burst can be described by the emission of a relativistic shell decelerating upon collision with the ISM. We show that the…
The detection of delayed emission at X-ray optical and radio wavelengths, ``after-glow'', suggests that the relativistic shell which emitted the initial GRB due to internal shocks decelerates on encountering an external medium, giving rise…
Assuming an adiabatic evolution of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) fireball interacting with an external medium, we calculate the hydrodynamics of the fireball with energy injection from a strongly magnetic millisecond pulsar through magnetic…
The X-ray light curves of hundreds of bursts are now available, thanks to the X-ray Telescope on board the Swift satellite, on time scales from ~1 minute up to weeks and in some cases months from the burst explosion. These data allow us to…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which are bright flashes of gamma rays from extragalactic sources followed by fading afterglow emission, are associated with stellar core collapse events. We report the detection of very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays…
Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) afterglows close to their peak intensity are among the brightest X-ray sources in the sky. Despite their fast power-law like decay, when fluxes are integrated from minutes up to hours after the GRB event, the…
We investigate the effect of X-ray echo emission in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We find that the echo emission can provide an alternative way of understanding X-ray shallow decays and jet breaks. In particular, a shallow decay followed by a…
Using the Swift data of GRB 050315, we progress on the uniqueness of our theoretically predicted Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) structure as composed by a proper-GRB (P-GRB), emitted at the transparency of an electron-positron plasma with suitable…
We study the ``normal'' decay phase of the X-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which follows the shallow decay phase, using the events simultaneously observed in the R-band. The classical external shock model -- in which neither…
A nascent magnetar, accompanying a gamma-ray burst (GRB) explosion, releases enormous rotational energy via magnetic dipole radiation. The energy loss rate of the magnetar is determined by the strength of the magnetic field at the pole. We…
We study the duration and variability of late time X-ray flares following gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the narrow field X-ray telescope (XRT) aboard the {\it Swift} spacecraft. These flares are thought to be indicative of late time…
We present a comparative study of the observed properties of the optical and X-ray afterglows of short- and long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Using a large sample of 37 short and 421 long GRBs, we find a strong correlation between the…
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…
Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are commonly accepted to originate in the explosion of particularly massive stars, which gives rise to a highly relativistic jet. Internal inhomogeneities in the expanding flow give rise to internal shock waves…
We continue our systematic statistical study on optical afterglow data of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We present the apparent magnitude distributions of early optical afterglows at different epochs (t= 10^2 s, t = 10^3 s, and 1 hour) for the…