Related papers: Gamma-ray bursts: postburst evolution of fireballs
The sudden release of copious $\g$-ray photons into a compact region creates an opaque photon--lepton fireball due to the prolific production of electron--positron pairs. The photons that we observe in the bursts emerge only at the end of…
I review the main observational achievements concerning GRB optical afterglows occurred in the past two years. Their emission seems to be well interpreted in terms of the `fireball' model, although a variety of behaviours are observed.…
Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) generate powerful relativistic jets that inject a large amount of energy into their surrounding environment, producing blast waves that accelerate particles to high energies. The GRB afterglow radiation provides a…
We present numerical simulations of Gamma-Ray Bursts arising from external shocks in the impulsive and wind models, including a weak or a strong coupling between electrons and protons plus magnetic fields, and analyze the burst features in…
Most cosmological models for gamma-ray bursts invoke the production of a ``fireball'' in a compact region, as indicated by the short time variability of the observed GRBs. The high density of $e^+e^-$ pairs in such fireballs inevitably…
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 association of long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with Type Ib/c supernovae implies that they explode into the winds of their Wolf-Rayet progenitor stars. Although the evolution of some GRB afterglows is consistent with expansion into a free…
Radio observations of the afterglow of the gamma-ray burst GRB970508 provide unique new constraints on afterglow models. The quenching of diffractive scintillation at 4 week delay provides the first direct estimate of source size and…
(Abridged) We discuss a Gamma-ray burst (GRB) fireball with an additional energy injection, either in the form of a Poynting-flux-dominated outflow or a kinetic-energy-dominated matter shell injected after the burst. A total injection…
Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which signify the end-life collapsing of very massive stars, are produced by extremely relativistic jets colliding into circumstellar medium. Huge energy is released both in the first few seconds, namely the…
A scenario is proposed that explains both the observed high pulsar velocities and extragalactic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The model involves an ultra- relativistic jet from a supernova (SN), that produces a GRB and its afterglow, whose…
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…
We predict the rate at which Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) afterglows should be detected in supernova searches as a function of limiting flux. Although GRB afterglows are rarer than supernovae, they are detectable at greater distances because of…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the universe, and their afterglow emission provides an opportunity to probe the physics of relativistic shock waves in an extreme environment. Several key pieces for completing…
The standard model of Gamma-Ray Bursts afterglows is based on synchrotron radiation from a blast wave produced when the relativistic ejecta encounters the surrounding medium. We reanalyze the refreshed shock scenario, in which slower…
Observations of very early multi-wavelength afterglows are critical to reveal the properties of the radiating fireball and its environment as well as the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We report our optical observations of GRB…
The spectral properties of a composite thermal emission arising from a relativistic expanding fireball can be remarkably different from the Planck function. We perform a detailed study of such a system to explore the features of the prompt…
Likely progenitors for the GRBs (gamma-ray bursts) are the mergers of compact objects or the explosions of massive stars. These two cases have distinctive environments for the GRB afterglow: the compact object explosions occur in the ISM…
The bright, nearby (z=0.1685) gamma-ray burst of 29 March 2003 has presented us with the first opportunity to directly image the expansion of a GRB. This burst reached flux density levels at centimeter wavelengths more than 50 times…
The afterglow emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is a valuable source of information to understand the physics of these energetic explosions. The blast wave model has become the standard to describe the evolution of the afterglow…