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Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era

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TLDR
In this article, the authors review the rapid observational and theoretical progress in this dynamical research field during the first two-year of the Swift mission, focusing on how observational breakthroughs have revolutionized our understanding of the physical origins of GRBs.
Abstract
Since the successful launch of NASA's dedicated gamma-ray burst (GRB) mission, Swift, the study of cosmological GRBs has entered a new era. Here I review the rapid observational and theoretical progress in this dynamical research field during the first two-year of the Swift mission, focusing on how observational breakthroughs have revolutionized our understanding of the physical origins of GRBs. Besides summarizing how Swift helps to solve some pre-Swift mysteries, I also list some outstanding problems raised by the Swift observations. An outlook of GRB science in the future, especially in the GLAST era, is briefly discussed.

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Dark Energy

TL;DR: A survey of theoretical models and some aspects of numerical studies for dark energy can be found in this paper, where the authors review the problem of dark energy, including a survey of the theoretical models.
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The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets

TL;DR: A comprehensive review of major developments in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts, with particular focus on the discoveries made within the last fifteen years when their true nature was uncovered, can be found in this paper.
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The Physics of Gamma-Ray Bursts and Relativistic Jets

TL;DR: A comprehensive review of major developments in the understanding of gamma-ray bursts can be found in this article, with particular focus on the discoveries made within the last fifteen years when their true nature was uncovered.
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The strongest cosmic magnets: soft gamma-ray repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars

Abstract: Two classes of X-ray pulsars, the anomalous X-ray pulsars and the soft gamma-ray repeaters, have been recognized in the last decade as the most promising candidates for being magnetars: isolated neutron stars powered by magnetic energy. I review the observational properties of these objects, focussing on the most recent results, and their interpretation in the magnetar model. Alternative explanations, in particular those based on accretion from residual disks, are also considered. The possible relations between these sources and other classes of neutron stars and astrophysical objects are also discussed.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Can all breaks in gamma-ray burst afterglows be explained by jet effects?

TL;DR: In this article, a detailed calculation of the jet evolution and emission was presented, and a simple formula of bulk Lorentz factor evolution was obtained, showing that the light curves are very smoothly steepened by jet effect, and the shape of the light curve is determined by only one parameter, where E and n are the fireball energy and surrounding medium density.
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Flaring up: radio diagnostics of the kinematic, hydrodynamic and environmental properties of gamma‐ray bursts

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors estimate the strength of the reverse shock expected for bursts in which multiwavelength observations have allowed the physical parameters of the forward shock to be determined, and they use all six bursts (980519, 990123, 990510, 991208, 99 1216, 000418) which are found to be adiabatic and thus are predicted to have a strong reverse shock.
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On the "canonical behaviour" of the X-ray afterglows of the Gamma Ray Bursts observed with Swift's XRT

TL;DR: The canonical behavior of the early X-ray afterglows of long-duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) observed by the X-Ray Telescope of the SWIFT satellite was predicted by the Cannonball model of GRBs as discussed by the authors.
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Deviation of light curves of gamma‐ray burst pulses from standard forms due to the curvature effect of spherical fireballs or uniform jets

TL;DR: In this article, Qin et al. employed the sample of Kocevski, Ryde & Liang to check this prediction and found that the phenomenon of the reverse S-feature is common, when compared with both the standard decay form and the marginal decay curve.
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