TY - BOOK ID - 700554 TI - Searching for the Long-Duration Gamma-Ray Burst Progenitor PY - 2014 SN - 3319066269 3319066250 PB - Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, DB - UniCat KW - Gamma ray bursts. KW - Gamma ray sources. KW - Bursts, Cosmic gamma ray KW - Bursts, Gamma ray KW - Cosmic gamma ray bursts KW - Transients, Gamma ray KW - Gamma ray astronomy KW - X-ray bursts KW - Gamma ray production KW - Gamma sources KW - Sources, Gamma ray KW - Gamma rays KW - Radiation sources KW - Astrophysics. KW - Mathematical physics. KW - Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics). KW - Mathematical Methods in Physics. KW - Physical mathematics KW - Physics KW - Astronomical physics KW - Astronomy KW - Cosmic physics KW - Mathematics KW - Space sciences. KW - Physics. KW - Natural philosophy KW - Philosophy, Natural KW - Physical sciences KW - Dynamics KW - Science and space KW - Space research KW - Cosmology KW - Science UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:700554 AB - Nominated as an outstanding thesis by the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of New Mexico, this thesis seeks to identify the gamma-ray burst (GRB) progenitor.  GRBs are extragalactic explosions that briefly outshine entire galaxies, but the mechanism that can release that much energy over a < 100 second burst is still a mystery.  The leading candidate for the GRB progenitor is currently a massive star which collapses to form a black hole–accretion disk system that powers the GRB.  GRB afterglows, however, do not always show the expected behavior of a relativistic blast wave interacting with the stellar wind that such a progenitor should have produced before its collapse. In this book, the author uses the Zeus-MP astrophysical hydrodynamics code to model the environment around a stellar progenitor prior to the burst.  He then develops a new semi-analytic MHD and emission model to produce light curves for GRBs encountering these realistic density profiles.  The work ultimately shows that the circumburst medium surrounding a GRB at the time of the explosion is much more complex than a pure wind, and that observed afterglows are entirely consistent with a large subset of proposed stellar progenitors. ER -