Gamma-ray bursts in the Swift era

Abstract

GRBs are the most energetic combination of jets and disks in the Universe. Observations made using Swift reveal a complex temporal and spectral behaviour. We propose that this behaviour can be used to refine the GRB classification scheme and align it better with progenitor types. The early (prompt) X-ray light curve can be well described by an exponential which relaxes into a power law. The transition time between the exponential and the power law gives a well-defined timescale, T p , for the burst duration which we use with the spectral index of the prompt emission, β p , and the prompt power law decay index, α p to define four classes of burst: short, slow, fast and soft. Short bursts tend to decline more gradually than long bursts. Most GRBs display a second “afterglow” component which can be fitted in a similar way to the early emission. During the decay of this second component, few GRBs show jet breaks in accord with pre-Swift predictions. However, the start time of the final afterglow decay, T a , correlates with the peak of the prompt γ-ray emission spectrum, E peak, in an analogous way to the Ghirlanda relation found between optical “jet-break” times, t j , and E peak. These data are inconsistent with simple achromatic jet-break models casting doubt on the reliability of using late temporal breaks to determine the jet collimation.