Related papers: Dust sublimation by GRBs and its implications
We have derived the column densities of heavy elements in three gamma-ray burst (GRB) optical transients, associated with the circumburst or interstellar medium (ISM) of the host galaxy. In comparison with the same elements observed in…
Scattering by dust grains in our Galaxy can produce X-ray halos, visible as expanding rings, around GRBs. This has been observed in three GRBs to date, allowing to derive accurate distances for the dust clouds as well as some constraints on…
The effects that gamma-ray bursts have on their environments is an important and outstanding issue. Dust destruction in particular has long been predicted while observational evidence is difficult to obtain. We examine the evidence for dust…
A long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) has been widely thought to arise from the collapse of a massive star, and it has been suggested that its ambient medium is a homogenous interstellar medium (ISM) or a stellar wind. There are two shocks…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) were first detected thanks to their prompt emission, which was the only information available for decades. In 2010, while the high-energy prompt emission remains the main tool for the detection and the first…
We have explored the capabilities of dust extinction and $\gamma$ rays to probe the properties of the interstellar medium in the nearby anti-centre region. We have jointly modelled the $\gamma$-ray intensity and the stellar reddening,…
Because of their brightness, gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows are viable targets for investigating the dust content in their host galaxies. Simple intrinsic spectral shapes of GRB afterglows allow us to derive the dust extinction. Recently,…
We present cm-band and mm-band afterglow observations of five long-duration $\gamma$-ray bursts (GRBs; GRB 130131A, 130420B, 130609A, 131229A, 140713A) with dust-obscured optical afterglow emission, known as "dark" GRBs. We detect the radio…
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 optical light that is generated simultaneously with the x-rays and gamma-rays during a gamma-ray burst (GRB) provides clues about the nature of the explosions that occur as massive stars collapse to form black holes. We report on the…
We present a new analysis of the dust obscuration in starburst galaxies at low and high redshift. This study is motivated by our unique sample of the most extreme UV-selected starburst galaxies in the nearby universe (z<0.3), found to be…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are short, intense flashes of soft gamma-rays coming from the distant Universe. Long-duration GRBs (those lasting more than ~2 s) are believed to originate from the deaths of massive stars, mainly on the basis of a…
Photoexcitation and ionization of partially ionized heavy atoms in highly relativistic flows by interstellar photons, followed by their reemission in radiative recombination and decay, boost star-light into beamed $\gamma$ rays along the…
Gamma-ray bursts categorically produce broadband afterglow emission, but in some cases, emission in the optical band is dimmer than expected based on the contemporaneously observed X-ray flux. This phenomenon, aptly dubbed "optical…
The afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have commonly been assumed to be due to shocks sweeping up the circum-stellar medium. However, most GRBs have been found in dense star-forming regions where a significant fraction of the prompt…
In order to study the effect of dust extinction on the afterglow of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), we carry out numerical calculations with high precision based on rigorous Mie theory and latest optical properties of interstellar dust grains, and…
We report on the X-ray dust-scattering features observed around the afterglow of the gamma ray burst GRB 160623A. With an XMM-Newton observation carried out ~2 days after the burst, we found evidence of at least six rings, with angular size…
High-energy photons emitted from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are subject to pair-production interactions with lower energy photons, leading to an effective optical depth. In this Letter, we estimate the opacity resulting from photon fields…
The recent detection of delayed X-ray and optical emission, ``afterglow,'' associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) supports models, where the bursts are produced by relativistic expanding blastwaves, ``fireballs,'' at cosmological…
It is not clear whether gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are unbiased tracers of cosmic star formation at $z > 2$. Since dusty starburst galaxies are significant contributors to the cosmic star formation at these redshifts, they should form a major…