TY - JOUR
T1 - Short-hard gamma-ray bursts
AU - Nakar, Ehud
N1 - Funding Information:
I am indebt to A. Gal-Yam for numerous discussions and invaluable remarks that considerably improved this review. I am also especially grateful to E. O. Ofek and J. Granot for detailed valuable comments. It is my pleasure to thank K. Belczynski, E. Berger, G. E. Brown, D. N. Burrows, S. B. Cenko, Z. Dai, D. B. Fox, D. A. Frail, N. Gehrels, G. Ghirlanda, D. Guetta, D. Z. Holz, S. R. Kulkarni, P. Kumar, C. Kouveliotou, W. H. Lee, Z. Li, R. Perna, E. S. Phinney, T. Piran, R. D. Preece, E. Ramirez-Ruiz, R. Sari, A. M. Soderberg, E. Waxman and D. Wei for helpful discussions and comments. I thank J. Racusin and D. N. Burrows for preparing Figure 5 and to S. D. Barthelmy for providing the X-ray light curve of SHB 050724. I am grateful to R. Quimby for creating the GRBlog, which I used frequently during the preparation of this review. This work was partially supported by a senior research fellowship from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and by NASA NNH05ZDA001N Grant.
PY - 2007/4
Y1 - 2007/4
N2 - Two types of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are observed: short-duration hard spectrum GRBs and long-duration soft spectrum GRBs. For many years long GRBs were the focus of intense research while the lack of observational data limited the study of short-hard GRBs (SHBs). In 2005 a breakthrough occurred following the first detections of SHB afterglows, longer wavelength emission that follows the burst of gamma-rays. Similarly to long GRBs, afterglow detections led to the identification of SHB host galaxies and measurement of their redshifts. These observations established that SHBs are cosmological relativistic sources that, unlike long GRBs, do not originate from the collapse of massive stars, and therefore constitute a distinct physical phenomenon. One viable model for SHB origin is the coalescence of compact binary systems (double neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole), in which case SHBs are the electromagnetic counterparts of strong gravitational-wave sources. The theoretical and observational study of SHBs following the recent pivotal discoveries is reviewed, along with new theoretical results that are presented here for the first time.
AB - Two types of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are observed: short-duration hard spectrum GRBs and long-duration soft spectrum GRBs. For many years long GRBs were the focus of intense research while the lack of observational data limited the study of short-hard GRBs (SHBs). In 2005 a breakthrough occurred following the first detections of SHB afterglows, longer wavelength emission that follows the burst of gamma-rays. Similarly to long GRBs, afterglow detections led to the identification of SHB host galaxies and measurement of their redshifts. These observations established that SHBs are cosmological relativistic sources that, unlike long GRBs, do not originate from the collapse of massive stars, and therefore constitute a distinct physical phenomenon. One viable model for SHB origin is the coalescence of compact binary systems (double neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole), in which case SHBs are the electromagnetic counterparts of strong gravitational-wave sources. The theoretical and observational study of SHBs following the recent pivotal discoveries is reviewed, along with new theoretical results that are presented here for the first time.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=34247262575&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.physrep.2007.02.005
DO - 10.1016/j.physrep.2007.02.005
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AN - SCOPUS:34247262575
VL - 442
SP - 166
EP - 236
JO - Physics Reports
JF - Physics Reports
SN - 0370-1573
IS - 1-6
ER -