Related papers: The Supernova Gamma-Ray Burst Connection
The Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) offer the unprecedented opportunity to observe for the first time the blackholic energy extracted by the vacuum polarization during the process of gravitational collapse to a black hole leading to the formation…
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are known to come in two duration classes, separated at ~2 s. Long bursts originate from star forming regions in galaxies, have accompanying supernovae (SNe) when near enough to observe and are likely caused by…
The progenitor stars of long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are thought to be Wolf-Rayet stars, which generate a massive and energetic wind. Nevertheless, about 25 percent of all GRB afterglows light curves indicate a constant density medium close…
Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous electromagnetic events in the universe. Their prompt gamma-ray emission has typical durations between a fraction of a second and several minutes. A rare subset of these events have durations in excess…
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…
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been often considered as the natural evolution of some core-collapse supernovae (SNe). While GRBs with relativistic jets emit an electromagnetic signal, GRBs with mildly relativistic jets are…
The collapsar model for gamma-ray bursts requires three essential ingredients: a massive core, removal of the hydrogen envelope, and enough angular momentum in the core. We study current massive star evolution models of solar metallicity to…
The galaxy population hosting long-duration GRBs provides a means to constrain the progenitor and an opportunity to use these violent explosions to characterize the nature of the high-redshift universe. Studies of GRB host galaxies in…
(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…
Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) and Supernovae (SNe) are among the brightest and most energetic physical processes in the universe. It is known that core-collapse SNe arise from the gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion of massive stars…
The physical nature of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), a new type of cosmological transients discovered recently, is not known. It has been suggested that FRBs can be produced when a spinning supra-massive neutron star loses centrifugal support…
The energy release in gamma-ray bursts is one of the most interesting clues on the nature of their "inner engines". We show here that the total energy release in GRBs varies by less than one order of magnitude from one burst to another…
Millisecond magnetars produced in the center of dying massive stars are one prominent model to power gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). However, their detailed nature remains a mystery. To explore the effects of the initial mass, rotation rate, wind…
The afterglow emission that follows gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) contains valuable information about the circumburst medium and, therefore, about the GRB progenitor. Theoretical studies of GRB blast waves, however, are often limited to simple…
Due to their highly luminous nature, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are useful tools in studying the early Universe (up to z = 10). We consider whether the available subset of Swift high redshift GRBs are unusual when compared to analogous…
The blast-wave model for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has been called into question by observations of spectra from GRBs that are harder than can be produced through optically thin synchrotron emission. If GRBs originate from the collapse of…
The various possibilities for the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) manifest in differing observable properties. Through deep spectroscopic and high-resolution imaging observations of some GRB hosts, I demonstrate that well-localized…
Growing theoretical evidence suggests that the first generation of stars may have been quite massive (~100-300 solar masses). If they retain their high mass until death, such stars will, after about 3Myr, make pair-instability supernovae.…
Cosmic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been firmly established as one of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe, releasing electromagnetic energy approaching the rest-mass energy of a neutron star in a few seconds. The two currently…
Bimodal distribution of the observed duration of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has led to two distinct progenitors; compact star mergers, either two neutron stars (NSs) or a NS and a black hole (BH), for short GRBs (SGRBs), and so-called…