The physics of gamma-ray bursts

By T. Piran. 2004

1,516 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRB's), short and intense pulses of low-energy $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ rays, have fascinated astronomers and astrophysicists since their unexpected discovery in the late sixties. During the last decade, several space missions\char22{}BATSE (Burst and Transient Source Experiment) on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, BeppoSAX and now HETE II (High-Energy Transient Explorer)\char22{}together with ground-based optical, infrared, and radio observatories have revolutionized our understanding of GRB's, showing that they are cosmological, that they are accompanied by long-lasting afterglows, and that they are associated with core-collapse supernovae. At the same time a theoretical understanding has emerged in the form of the fireball internal-external shocks model. According to this model GRB's are produced when the kinetic energy of an ultrarelativistic flow is dissipated in internal collisions. The afterglow arises when the flow is slowed down by shocks with the surrounding circumburst matter. This model has had numerous successful predictions, like the predictions of the afterglow itself, of jet breaks in the afterglow light curve, and of the optical flash that accompanies the GRB's. This review focuses on the current theoretical understanding of the physical processes believed to take place in GRB's.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f7ba8783d2a600069c02b215467f031166b71554

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Citations in the corpus

Low-Luminosity Gamma-Ray Bursts as a Unique Population: Luminosity Function, Local Rate, and Beaming Factor (2006, background): “It is long speculated that long GRBs are associated with deaths of massive stars, and hence, SNe (for recent reviews, see Zhang & Mészáros 2004; Piran 2005; Mészáros 2006; Woosley & Bloom 2006).”
The multimessenger picture of compact object encounters: binary mergers versus dynamical collisions (2012, background): “Several challenges remain, however, and the case is far from being closed (Piran 2005; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007; Nakar 2007; Gehrels, Ramirez-Ruiz & Fox 2009).”
A complete reference of the analytical synchrotron external shock models of gamma-ray bursts (2013, background): “Although the nature of the progenitor and central engine as well as the detailed physics of c-ray emission are still rather uncertain (for reviews, see e.g. Zhang and Mészáros, 2004; Piran, 2005; Mészáros, 2006; Zhang, 2007; Kumar and Zhang, 2013), a generic synchrotron external shock model has been”
Mergers of Neutron Star-Black Hole Binaries with Small Mass Ratios: Nucleosynthesis, Gamma-Ray Bursts, and Electromagnetic Transients (2005, neutral): “…central engines of gamma- ray bursts (GRBs) already two decades ago, they have been mentioned in Paczyński (1986) and Goodman et al. (1987) and discussed in more detail by Eichler et al. (1989) (for a more complete bibliography we refer to existing reviews, e.g. Meszaros 2002 or Piran 2005).”
Formation and dynamics of coherent structures involving phase-space vortices in plasmas (2006, background): “Such pair plasmas [112–114,80] are ubiquitous in semiconductors in the form of electron and ion holes, in many astrophysical environments (from pulsars to quasars), as well as in the early universe and in active galactic nuclei, in our own galaxy and in supernova remnants in the form of electrons an”
EFFICIENCY OF MAGNETIC TO KINETIC ENERGY CONVERSION IN A MONOPOLE MAGNETOSPHERE (2009, background): “One could use equation (50), which is based upon our analytical model of the simulations, to obtain the Lorentz factor of any GRB jet.”
Stability of relativistic jets from rotating, accreting black holes via fully three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations (2008, background): “Jets have now also been observed in many other AGN/blazars (Bridle & Perley 1984), in neutron star and BH x-ray binaries (Mirabel & Rodrı́guez 1999; Fender et al. 2004), in Herbig-Haro objects (e.g. Konigl 1982), and are required for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) (e.g. Piran 2005).”