Gamma Ray Bursts in the Era of Rapid Followup

Abstract

We present a status report on the study of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) in the era of rapid follow-up using the world's largest robotic optical telescopes - the 2-m Liverpool and Faulkes telescopes. Within the context of key unsolved issues in GRB physics, we describe (1) our innovative software that allows real-time automatic analysis and interpretation of GRB light curves, (2) the novel instrumentation that allows unique types of observations (in particular, early time polarisation measurements) and (3) the key science questions and discoveries to which robotic observations are ideally suited, concluding with a summary of current understanding of GRB physics provided by combining rapid optical observations with simultaneous observations at other wavelengths.

20 pages, 12 figures; Review article accepted for publication in Advances in Astronomy, special issue 'Robotic Astronomy (Hindawi Publishing Corporation).

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Constraining GRB Emission Physics with Extensive Early-Time, Multiband Follow-up
• GRB 090313 and the Origin of Optical Peaks in GRB Light Curves: Implications for Lorentz Factors and Radio Flares
• Prompt X-ray and Optical Excess Emission due to Hadronic Cascades in Gamma-Ray Bursts
• GRB 100614A and GRB 100615A: two extremely dark GRBs
• A robotic pipeline for fast GRB followup with the Las Cumbres observatory network