Gamma-ray bursts and X-ray melting of material as a potential source of chondrules and planets

The intense radiation from a gamma-ray burst (GRB) is shown to be capable of melting stony material at distances up to 300 light years which subsequently cool to form chondrules. These conditions were created in the laboratory for the first time when millimeter sized pellets were placed in a vacuum chamber in the white synchrotron beam at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). The pellets were rapidly heated in the X-ray and gamma-ray furnace to above 1400 C melted and cooled. This process heats from the inside unlike normal furnaces. The melted spherical samples were examined with a range of techniques and found to have microstructural properties similar to the chondrules that come from meteorites. This experiment demonstrates that GRBs can melt precursor material to form chondrules that may subsequently influence the formation of planets. This work extends the field of laboratory astrophysics to include high power synchrotron sources.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. Proceedings of the 5th INTEGRAL Workshop, Munich 16-20 February 2004. High resolution figures available at http://bermuda.ucd.ie/%7Esmcbreen/papers/duggan_01.pd

Gamma-ray bursts and X-ray melting of material to form chondrules and planets

Chondrules are millimeter sized objects of spherical to irregular shape that constitute the major component of chondritic meteorites that originate in the region between Mars and Jupiter and which fall to Earth. They appear to have solidified rapidly from molten or partially molten drops. The heat source that melted the chondrules remains uncertain. The intense radiation from a gamma-ray burst (GRB) is capable of melting material at distances up to 300 light years. These conditions were created in the laboratory for the first time when millimeter sized pellets were placed in a vacuum chamber in the white synchrotron beam at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The pellets were rapidly heated in the X-ray and gamma-ray furnace to above 1400C melted and cooled. This process heats from the inside unlike normal furnaces. The melted spherical samples were examined with a range of techniques and found to have microstructural properties similar to the chondrules that come from meteorites. This experiment demonstrates that GRBs can melt precursor material to form chondrules that may subsequently influence the formation of planets. This work extends the field of laboratory astrophysics to include high power synchrotron sources.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Full resolution figures available from A&

Very High Energy gamma-rays from electron/positron Pair Halos

In this paper we study the formation of giant electrons-positron pair halos around the powerful high energy extragalactic sources. We investigate the dependence of radiation of pair halos, in particular the spectral and angular distributions on the energy spectrum of the primary gamma-rays, the redshift of the source, and the flux of the extragalactic background light.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures, published in Volume No. 18, Issue No. 06 of "International Journal Of Modern Physics D

The frontier of darkness: the cases of GRB 040223, GRB 040422, GRB 040624

Understanding the reasons for the faintness of the optical/near-infrared afterglows of the so-called dark bursts is essential to assess whether they form a subclass of GRBs, and hence for the use of GRBs in cosmology. With VLT and other ground-based telescopes, we searched for the afterglows of the INTEGRAL bursts GRB 040223, GRB 040422 and GRB 040624 in the first hours after the triggers. A detection of a faint afterglow and of the host galaxy in the K band was achieved for GRB 040422, while only upper limits were obtained for GRB 040223 and GRB 040624, although in the former case the X-ray afterglow was observed. A comparison with the magnitudes of a sample of afterglows clearly shows the faintness of these bursts, which are good examples of a population that an increasing usage of large diameter telescopes is beginning to unveil.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the 16th Annual October Astrophysics Conference in Maryland "Gamma Ray Bursts in the Swift Era", eds. S. Holt, N. Gehrels & J. Nouse

The bright optical/NIR afterglow of the faint GRB 080710 - Evidence for a jet viewed off axis

We investigate the optical/near-infrared light curve of the afterglow of GRB 080710 in the context of rising afterglows. Optical and near-infrared photometry was performed using the seven channel imager GROND and the Tautenburg Schmidt telescope. X-ray data were provided by the X-ray Telescope onboard the Swift satellite. The optical/NIR light curve of the afterglow of GRB 080710 is dominated by an initial increase in brightness, which smoothly turns over into a shallow power law decay. The initially rising achromatic light curve of the afterglow of GRB 080710 can be accounted for with a model of a burst viewed off-axis or a single jet in its pre deceleration phase and in an on-axis geometry. An unified picture of the afterglow light curve and prompt emission properties can be obtained with an off-axis geometry, suggesting that late and shallow rising optical light curves of GRB afterglows might be produced by geometric effects.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted by A and