Cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts, Their Afterglows, and Their Host Galaxies

The discovery by the BeppoSAX satellite of X-ray afterglow emission from the gamma-ray burst which occurred on 28 February 1997 produced a revolution in our knowledge of the gamma-ray burst phenomenon. Along with the discovery of X-ray afterglows, the optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts were discovered and the distance issue was settled, at least for long $\gamma$-ray bursts. The 30 year mystery of the gamma-ray burst phenomenon is now on the way to solution. Here I rewiew...

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the Universe. They appear connected to supernova remnants from massive stars or the merger of their remnants, and their brightness makes them temporarily detectable out to the larges distances yet explored in the Universe. After pioneering breakthroughs from space and ground experiments, their study is entering a new phase with observations from recently launched satellites, as well as the prospect of detections or limits f...

The discoveries that GRBs have X-ray, optical and radio afterglows have connected the study of GRBs to the rest of astronomy, and revolutionized the field. In this review, I discuss the implications that the observation of these afterglows have for burst energies and luminosities, and for models of the bursts and their afterglows. I describe recent evidence linking the long, softer, smoother GRBs detected by BeppoSAX and core collapse supernovae. Finally, I summarize recent w...

Gamma-ray bursts are violent events occurring randomly in the sky. In this review, I will present the fireball model, proposed to explain the phenomenon of gamma-ray bursts. This model has important consequences for the production and observation at Earth of gravitational waves, high energy neutrinos, cosmic rays and high energy photons, and the second part of this review will be focused on these aspects. A last section will briefly discuss the topic of the use of gamma-ray b...

We review recent results on the high-redshift universe and the cosmic evolution obtained using Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) as tracers of high-redshift galaxies. Most of the results come from photometric and spectroscopic observations of GRB host galaxies once the afterglow has faded away but also from the analysis of the GRB afterglow line of sight as revealed by absorptions in their optical spectrum.

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 gamma-rays. These emissions are believed to originate from a relativistic jet, which is driven due to the collapse of special massive stars and the mergers of compact binaries (i.e., double neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole)...

This article gives an overview of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their relation to astroparticle physics and cosmology. GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the universe that occur roughly once per day and are characterized by flashes of gamma-rays typically lasting from a fraction of a second to thousands of seconds. Even after more than four decades since their discovery they still remain not fully understood. Two types of GRBs are observed: spectrally harder short duratio...

Host galaxies are an excellent means of probing the natal environments that generate gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Surveys of long-duration GRB (LGRB) host environments and their ISM properties have produced intriguing new results with important implications for LGRB progenitor models. These host studies are also critical in evaluating the utility of LGRBs as potential tracers of star formation and metallicity at high redshifts, particularly when considering the implications for p...

Since the launch of the highly successful and ongoing Swift mission, the field of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has undergone a revolution. The arcsecond GRB localizations available within just a few minutes of the GRB alert has signified the continual sampling of the GRB evolution through the prompt to afterglow phases revealing unexpected flaring and plateau phases, the first detection of a kilonova coincident with a short GRB, and the identification of samples of low-luminosity,...

This paper summarizes recents results in gamma-ray astronomy, most of which were derived with data from ground-based gamma-ray detectors. Many of the contributions presented at this conference involve multiwavelength studies which combine ground-based gamma-ray measurements with optical data or space-based X-ray and gamma-ray measurements. Besides measurements of the diffuse emission from the Galaxy, observations of blazars, gamma-ray bursts, and supernova remnants this paper...