Swift Observations of Gamma Ray Bursts
Since its launch on 20 November 2004, the Swift mission is detecting~100 gammaray bursts (GRBs) each year, and immediately (within~90s) starting X-ray and UV/optical observations of the afterglow. It has already collected an impressive database including prompt emission to higher sensitivities than BATSE, uniform monitoring of afterglows, and rapid follow-up by other observatories notified through the GCN. The detection of X-ray afterglows have been found to have complex temporal shapes including tails emission from the prompt phase and bright flares. X-ray afterglows from short bursts has led to accurate localizations. It is found that they can occur in non-star forming galaxies or regions, whereas long GRBs are strongly concentrated within star forming regions. This is consistent with the NS merger model. Swift has greatly increased the redshift range of GRB detection. The highest redshift GRBs, at z~5-6, are approaching the era of reionization. Ground-based deep optical spectroscopy of high redshift burstsis giving metallicity measurements and other information on the source environment to much greater distance than other techniques. The localization of GRB 060218 to a nearby galaxy, and association with SN 2006aj, added a valuable member to the class of GRBs with detected supernova. The prospects for future progress are excellent give the>10 year orbital lifetime of the Swift satellite.
Swift Observations-Gamma Ray Bursts n
Neil Gehrels
Astroparticle Physics Laboratory NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
国际会议
紧凑型物体的天体物理学国际会议(International Conference on Astrophysics of Compact Objects)
安徽黄山
英文
3-8
2007-07-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）