Shiho Kobayashi: Gamma-Ray Bursts and Magnetized Fireballs
Gamma-Ray Bursts and Magnetized Fireballs
A few times a day our sky flashes with a powerful pulse of gamma-rays. A
single gamma-ray burst (GRB) releases in seconds the same amount of energy
Sun will emit over its 10 billion-year lifetime. Recent observations
revolutionized our understanding of GRBs, and it suggests that GRBs involve
the formation of a black hole via a catastrophic stellar collapse event or
possibly a neutron star merger. Paying attention to interesting relativistic
effects, I briefly explain the standard gamma-ray burst model, and I
summarize several open issues which are not explained in the standard
framework. Magnetized outflow model is recently attracting attentions of
researchers, because it could circumvent the problems in the standard model.
I will discuss how polarization measurements can give constraints to the
magnetized model.
