Related papers: A comprehensive analysis of Swift/XRT data: I. App…

The X-ray light curves of many gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Swift X-Ray Telescope (XRT) have a very steep-decay component (tail) following the prompt gamma-rays in the early phase and have some erratic flares occurring at a time…

Swift has revealed features in GRB early light curves, such as steep decays and X-ray flares, whose properties are consistent with an internal origin though they are far from understood. The steep X-ray decay is often explained using the…

We report on the temporal and spectral characteristics of the early X-ray emission from the Gamma Ray Bursts GRB050126 and GRB050219A as observed by Swift. The X-ray light-curves of these 2 bursts both show remarkably steep early decays…

We show that the X-ray and $\gamma$-ray spectra of Swift GRBs and their afterglows are consistent with the emission characteristic of an expanding, relativistic fireball. The classical afterglow due to the impact of the fireball on the…

The apparent spectral evolution observed in the steep decay phase of many GRB early afterglows raises a great concern of the high-latitude "curvature effect" interpretation of this phase. However, previous curvature effect models only…

This paper discusses Swift observations of the gamma-ray burst GRB 050315 (z=1.949) from 80 s to 10 days after the onset of the burst. The X-ray light curve displayed a steep early decay (t^-5) for ~200 s and several breaks. However, both…

The origins of Gamma-ray Burst prompt emission are currently not well understood and in this context long, well-observed events are particularly important to study. We present the case of GRB 070616, analysing the exceptionally…

The X-ray light-curves of the GRB afterglows monitored by Swift display one to four phases of power-law decay. In chronological order they are: the burst tail, the "hump", the standard decay, and the post jet-break decay. The large-angle…

We observed an X-ray afterglow of GRB 060904A with the Swift and Suzaku satellites. We found rapid spectral softening during both the prompt tail phase and the decline phase of an X-ray flare in the BAT and XRT data. The observed spectra…

The long gamma-ray burst GRB 060714 was observed to exhibit a series of five X-ray flares beginning ~70 s after the burst trigger T0 and continuing until T0 + ~200 s. The first two flares were detected by the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on…

We report on the temporal and spectral characteristics of the early X-ray emission from the GRB 050822 as observed by Swift. This burst is likely to be an XRF showing major X-ray flares in its XRT light-curve. The quality of the data allows…

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…

Observations of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) with Swift produced the initially surprising result that many bursts have large X-ray flares superimposed on the underlying afterglow. The flares were sometimes intense, had rapid rise and decay…

(Abridged) The Swift X-Ray Telescope (XRT) reveals some interesting features of early X-ray afterglows, including a distinct rapidly decaying component preceding the conventional afterglow component in many sources, a shallow decay…

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…

Swift triggered on a precursor to the main burst of GRB 061121 (z=1.314), allowing observations to be made from the optical to gamma-ray bands. Many other telescopes, including Konus-Wind, XMM-Newton, ROTSE and the Faulkes Telescope North,…

Most gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Swift satellite show an early rapid decay phase (RDP) in their X-ray lightcurve, which is usually a smooth continuation of the prompt gamma-ray emission, strongly suggesting that it is its tail.…

Detection of prompt emission by Swift-XRT provides a unique tool to study how the prompt spectrum of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) extends down to the soft X-ray band. This energy band is particularly important for prompt emission studies, since…

We present the first systematic investigation of the morphological and timing properties of flares in GRBs observed by Swift/XRT. We consider a large sample drawn from all GRBs detected by Swift, INTEGRAL and HETE-2 prior to 2006 Jan 31,…

Swift captured for the first time a smoothly rising X-ray re-brightening of clear non-flaring origin after the steep decay in a long gamma-ray burst (GRB): GRB081028. A rising phase is likely present in all GRBs but is usually hidden by the…