Related papers: Line emission from gamma-ray burst environments
The gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) of long duration are very likely to be connected to the death of massive stars. The gamma-ray emission is believed to come from energy released internally in a flow that moves at ultrarelativistic speed. The fast…
Observations of X-ray flares from Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) imply strong constraints on possible physical models. We provide a general discussion of these. In particular, we show that in order to account for the relatively flat and weak…
Gamma-ray bursts are believed to be some catastrophic event in which material is ejected at a relativistic velocity, and internal collisions within this ejecta produce the observed $\gamma$-ray flash. The angular size of a causally…
Core-collapse in massive stars is believed to produce a rapidly spinning black hole surrounded by a compact disk or torus. This forms an energetic MeV-nucleus inside a remnant He-core, powered by black hole-spin energy. The output produces…
Observations of the afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have revealed that they lie at cosmological distances, and so correspond to the release of an enormous amount of energy. The nature of the central engine that powers these events and…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are emitted by relativistic ejecta from powerful cosmic explosions. Their light curves suggest that the gamma-ray emission occurs at early stages of the ejecta expansion, well before it decelerates in the ambient…
Massive stars form in dense and massive molecular cores. The exact formation mechanism is unclear, but it is possible that some massive stars are formed by processes similar to those that produce the low-mass stars, with accretion/ejection…
Well-sampled optical lightcurves of 146 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are compiled from the literature. By empirical fitting we identify eight possible emission components and summarize the results in a "synthetic" lightcurve. Both optical flare…
Beamed gamma-ray burst (GRB) sources produce a bow shock in their gaseous environment. The emitted flux from this bow shock may dominate over the direct emission from the jet for lines of sight which are outside the angular radius of the…
Many previous studies have determined that the long lasting emission at X-ray, optical and radio wavelengths from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), called the afterglow, is likely produced by the external forward shock model. In this model, the GRB…
Absorption and Reprocessing of Gamma-ray burst radiation in the environment of cosmological GRBs can be used as a powerful probe of the elusive nature of their progenitors. In particular, transient X-ray emission line and absorption…
Highly radiative expansion of a relativistic shell is shown to explain all observed features of the afterglows of the two bursts GRB 970228 and GRB 970508. In particular, in the first case the observed time-dependence t^-1.32 of the soft…
Lightning in the solar nebula is considered to be one of the probable sources for producing the chondrules that are found in meteorites. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) provide a large flux of gamma-rays that Compton scatter and create a charge…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and following afterglows are considered to be produced by dissipation of kinetic energy of a relativistic fireball and radiation process is widely believed as synchrotron radiation or inverse Compton scattering of…
Optical Transients from gamma-ray burst sources, in addition to offering a distance determination, convey important information on the physics of the emission mechanism, and perhaps also about the underlying energy source. As the gamma-ray…
Gamma-ray burst (GRB) X-ray light curves exhibit a variety of complex temporal structures, such as flares and plateaus. The origin of flares seen in many GRB early afterglows is still uncertain. Here, we analyze a sample of 89 GRBs, 61 of…
We have conducted a thorough and blind search for emission lines in >70 Swift X-ray afterglows of total exposure ~10^7s. We find that most afterglows are consistent with pure power-laws plus extinction. Significant outliers to the…
We discuss the possibility that a significant contribution of the hard X-ray Background is the integrated emission from a population of galaxies undergoing advection-dominated accretion in their nuclei. Owing to poor coupling between ions…
Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful transients in the Universe, over-shining for a few seconds all other $\gamma$-ray sky sources. Their emission is produced within narrowly collimated relativistic jets launched after the…
The X-ray light curves of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) display complex features, including plateaus and flares, that challenge theoretical models. Here, we study the properties of flares that are observed in the early afterglow phase (up to a…