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Session 43 - Gamma-ray Burst Counterparts and Afterglows.
Display session, Tuesday, June 09
Atlas Ballroom,
We propose that Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are related to the formation of supermassive black holes such as those at centers of quasars and galaxies. The formation events associated with these black holes have a much higher gravitational energy release than conventional solar mass scale GRB candidates. They therefore can easily meet the energetic requirement of the observed GRBs. To yield a significant portion of the observed GRB event rate, the amount of baryons incorporated into the progenitors of these black holes as a fraction of the total baryons in our universe is about 0.0001. This fraction roughly matches the masses of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies as a fraction of the total baryonic mass of the host galaxies. If the progenitors are relativistic star clusters, as commonly proposed, star collisions during the formation of the supermassive black holes may give rises to the rich and bursty time structure observed in GRB events.
