Correlated Spectral And Temporal Behaviour Of Late-Time Afterglows Of Gamma Ray Bursts

The cannonball (CB) model of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) predicts that the asymptotic behaviour of the spectral energy density of the X-ray afterglow of GRBs is a power-law in time and in frequency where the difference between the temporal and spectral power-law indexes, $\alpha_X-\beta_X$, is restricted to the values 0, 1/2 and 1. Here we report the distributions of the values $\alpha_X$, $\beta_X$ and their difference for a sample of 315 Swift GRBs. This sample includes all Swift GRBs that were detected before August 1, 2012, whose X-ray afterglow extended well beyond 1 day and the estimated error in $\alpha_X-\beta_X$ was $\leq 0.25$. The values of $\alpha_X$ were extracted from the CB model fits to the entire light curves of their X-ray afterglow while the spectral index was extracted by the Swift team from the time integrated X-ray afterglow of these GRBs. We found that the distribution of the difference $\alpha_X-\beta_X$ for these 315 Swift GRBs has three narrow peaks around 0, 1/2 and 1 whose widths are consistent with being due to the measurement errors, in agreement with the CB model prediction.Comment: 12 figures, added references, used data reported in the Swift/XRT light-curve repositor

Is there a 1998bw-like supernova in the afterglow of gamma ray burst 011121?

We use the very simple and successful Cannonball Model (CB) of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows (AGs) to analyze the observations of the strongly extinct optical AG of the relatively nearby GRB 011121, which were made with ground-based telescopes at early times, and with the HST at later time. We show that GRB 011121 was indeed associated with a 1998bw-like supernova at the GRB's redshift, as we had specifically predicted for this GRB before the supernova could be observed.Comment: Submitted for publicatio

A solution of a hoary conundrum: the origin and properties of cosmic rays

I discuss a theory of non-solar cosmic rays (CRs) based on a single type of CR source at all energies. All observed properties of CRs are predicted in terms of very simple and completely `standard' physics. The source of CRs is extremely `economical': it has only one parameter to be fitted to the enormous ensemble of all of the data. All other inputs are `priors', that is theoretical or observational items of information independent of the properties of the source of CRs and chosen to lie in their pre-established ranges.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures. Contribution to the Cosmic Ray International Seminar, Catania, 200

Dark Matter and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

The recently observed Deuterium abundance in a low- metallicity high-redshift hydrogen cloud, which is about ten times larger than that observed in the near interstellar medium, is that expected from the Standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis theory and the observed abundances of $^4$He and $^7$Li extrapolated to their primordial values. The inferred cosmic baryon to photon ratio, $\eta=(1.60\pm 0.1)\times 10^{-10},$ yields a mean cosmic baryon density, in critical mass units, of $\Omega_b\approx (0.6\pm 0.1)\times 10^{-2}h^{-2},$ with $h$ being the Hubble constant in units of $100 km~s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}$. This baryon density is consistent with the mean cosmic density of matter visible optically and in X-rays. It implies that most of the baryons in the Universe are visible and are not dark. Combined with the observed ratio of baryons to light in X-ray emitting clusters, it yields the value $\Omega \approx 0.15$ for the mean mass density of the Universe, which is consistent with that obtained from the mass to light ratio in clusters. This mass density is about ten times larger than the mean baryon mass density. It indicates that most of the matter in the Universe consists of nonbaryonic dark matter.Comment: Invited talk to be published in the proceedings of ``Dark Matter In Cosmology'' (Villars sur Ollon, Switzerland January 21-28, 1995