Gamma-ray burst theory after Swift

摘要

Gamma-ray bursts, black holes, neutron stars, X-ray afterglow observations in the pie-Swift era confirmed to a large extent the relativistic blast wave model for gamma-ray bursts. Together with the observations of properties of host galaxies and the association with (type Ic) SNe this has led to the generally accepted Collapsar origin of long GRBs. However, most of the afterglow data have been collected hours after the burst. The X-Ray Telescope (XRT) and the UV/optical Telescope (UVOT) onboard Swift are able to slew to the direction of a burst in a real time and record the early broad-band afterglow light curves. These observations, and in particular the X-ray observations, resulted in many surprises. While we have anticipated a smooth transition from the prompt emission to the afterglow many observed early light curves are drastically different. We review here how these observations are changing our understanding of GRBs and the modifications of the standard afterglow model arisen accordingly. We discuss how the upcoming high-energy afterglow observation could be used to test these modifications. We also show that GRB could be powerful probes of the quantum gravity.