Gamma-Ray Bursts: The Brightest Explosions in the Universe , Gilbert Vedrenne and Jean-Luc Atteia
Praxis/Springer, New York, 2009. $189.00 (571 pp.). ISBN 978-3-540-39085-5
As one popular saying goes: “When you have seen one gamma-ray burst, you have seen one gamma-ray burst.” Since the discovery of GRBs in 1973, scientists have been mystified and enthralled by these astronomical phenomena, not only for their extreme energies, but also for the broad variations in their burst luminosities, peak fluxes, morphology, time structure, and spectral energy distributions. In-deed, GRBs have produced a rich field of study for more than 35 years.
In Gamma-Ray Bursts: The Brightest Explosions in the Universe, French gamma-ray astronomers Gilbert Vedrenne and Jean-Luc Atteia have summarized both the observational history and the theoretical understanding of GRBs through 2007. Vedrenne has been involved in gamma-ray astronomy since before the first GRB was reported, and experimentalist Atteia has been studying the gamma-ray sky since the early 1980s. Tapping into their wide and deep perspectives, the authors write an engaging account of the field, covering the accidental discovery of the first GRB by instruments designed to monitor atmospheric nuclear test ban violations and the years of early observations by an international armada of satellites.
For more than 20 years, the leading GRB progenitors were thought to be neutron stars in our own galaxy. The energies required to produce those titanic explosions at cosmological distances were unimaginable, and hints of cyclotron lines in early experiments were consistent with a neutron-star origin. In the 1990s that picture changed dramatically. Accurate x-ray positions determined by scientists using the Italian BeppoSAX satellite to study the burst afterglow phase enabled the identification of optical counterparts and the subsequent determination of distance using optical redshifts. It was also during that time that NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory determined the isotropic distribution of GRBs in the sky, which led, in many observers’ minds, to a cosmological origin for the bursts. We now know that GRBs are located at cosmological distances, that many of them are accompanied by afterglows at x-ray- to radio-wavelength energies, and that they appear to fall into two categories—long and short. Vedrenne and Atteia recount that history in the first four chapters of their text, describing the famous bursts of the BeppoSAX era and those observed with the MIT-based international HETE (High Energy Transient Explorer) 2 and NASA’s Swift satellites.
Following the introductory chapters, the authors lay the theoretical framework for bursts and other related phenomena such as GRB afterglows, jet formation, fireballs, and blastwaves. Despite the complex physics, they do an admirable job of summarizing the wide range of theoretical models that are currently vying to explain GRB observations. This section functions more as a technical reference when compared to the more broadly accessible earlier chapters. Throughout the book, each chapter is packed with references to the original papers and offers concluding remarks that summarize the main points and the outstanding issues. This book will be appreciated by graduate students and practicing scientists, if they can afford the $189 price tag. Govert Schilling and Naomi Greenberg-Slovin’s Flash! The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe (Cambridge University Press, 2002) is more accessible and affordable, and is the book I recommend to my undergraduate students.
The most current material in Gamma-Ray Bursts covers the emergence of a detailed multiwavelength picture of GRBs from Swift’s early discoveries of x-ray afterglows following short bursts, coupled with extensive ground-based radio and visible-light data. Naturally, the models that seemed to work well in the days of BeppoSAX have not held up in the face of richer, more modern datasets obtained from Swift and ground-based observatories. The authors compare the first three years of Swift’s multiwavelength observations with various models for both long and short bursts, and they examine in detail the arguments for and against possible progenitors for each type of burst. Even though Swift has observed more than 200 additional bursts since the book went to print, the theoretical picture has not become any clearer. Virtually every issue raised by the authors that was a problem at the end of 2007 continues to be a subject of active research.
In their final chapter, the authors discuss newer generations of instrumentation, such as NASA’s recently launched Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope , and observations that exploit GRBs as probes of the early universe. The possible use of GRBs as “standard candles” indicates that we may someday be able to extend our knowledge of the cosmic distance ladder to the earliest days of star formation. The book also explains how GRB studies may benefit from future observations of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, neutrinos, and gravitational radiation.
Gamma-Ray Bursts is an important and valuable book for any researcher in the GRB field or in related fields that can be illuminated by GRB results. Vedrenne and Atteia have written a brilliant synthesis of many years of research by hundreds of international scientists, and they don’t shy away from explaining the scientific missteps along the way. It is a tale that illustrates the scientific process at its best.
