Western Kentucky University
Department of Physics and Astronomy

Colloquium

Dr Dirk Grupe

Astrophysics and Space Science
Morehead State University

"Evidence for new relations between GRB prompt and X-ray afterglow emission from (almost) 12 years of Swift"

September 19, 2016 @ 4:00 pm in TCCW 201

Abstract

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic transient events in the Universe. Not only do they represent the violent end of a massive star and the birth of a black hole, but their explosions allows us to trace them throughout the entire Universe. The NASA Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer Mission's fast slew capacity allows it to start collecting data of these transient GRB events within a minute or two after detection, giving us access to the earliest phases of a GRB afterglow. Since its launch in November 2004, Swift has discovered more than 1000 bursts with more than 300 with spectroscopic redshift measurements and given us new evidence for connections between the GRB prompt and afterglow emission. I will finish the talk by looking into the future and explain how we can use predictive data mining tools to determine the afterglow light curves and the redshifts of the bursts based on observed properties of the burst.