2016/05/06 by Antonino Cucchiara, A. Cucchiara, T. Totani +3 · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors #COSMIC cancer database #Galaxy #Gamma-ray burst #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Intergalactic travel #Interstellar medium #Metallicity #Sky #Spectral line #Stars #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s11214-016-0253-4
published in Space Science Reviews 202(1-4), 143-158 (Springer Science+Business Media) · 18 pages; 5 Figures. Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews
openalex publication_date 2016/05/06 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · arxiv created 2016/07/10 · arxiv updated 2016/07/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions known, capable of outshining the rest of gamma-ray sky during their short-lived prompt emission. Their cosmological nature makes them the best tool to explore the final stages in the lives of very massive stars up to the highest redshifts. Furthermore, studying the emission from their low-energy counterparts (optical and infrared) via rapid spectroscopy, we have been able to pin down the exact location of the most distant galaxies as well as placing stringent constraints on their host galaxies and intervening systems at low and high-redshift (e.g. metallicity and neutral hydrogen fraction). In fact, each GRB spectrum contains absorption features imprinted by metals in the host interstellar medium (ISM) as well as the intervening intergalactic medium (IGM) along the line of sight. In this chapter we summarize the progress made using a large dataset of GRB spectra in understanding the nature of both these absorbers and how GRBs can be used to study the early Universe, in particular to measure the neutral hydrogen fraction and the escape fraction of UV photons before and during the epoch of re-ionization.