Program: GN-2008A-Q-7

Title:Rapid Spectroscopy and Imaging Follow-up of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows (Gemini North)
PI:Joshua Bloom
Co-I(s): Hsiao-Wen Chen, Jason X Prochaska, Karl Glazebrook, Sebastian Lopez, Ryan Foley, Max Pettini, Pat Hall, Andrew Bunker, Daniel Perley, Maryam Modjaz, Dovi Poznanski, Charles Bailyn, Bethany Cobb, Donald York, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Daniel Kocevski, Nat Butler

Abstract

The Swift satellite has revolutionized the study of gamma-ray bursts by providing unprecedented numbers of accurate real-time localizations. With rapid and now automated access to GMOS and NIRI, Gemini has emerged as the cornerstone facility of our group's GRB research efforts. A pressing question -- which we hope to address with a systematic imaging study with Gemini -- is the origin of so-called dark afterglow GRBs, which comprise roughly half the existing sample. Constraining, in particular, the number of dark GRBs at high redshift (z > 6) has important implications for understanding the bursts themselves as well as informing the role of future missions (eg. JDEM, LSST). In general, GRB afterglows have proven to be a versatile and unique astrophysical probe in the study of the ISM of distant galaxies, the IGM at z>2, and into the reionization epoch. To this end, our proposed semester 2008A ToO program also seeks to uncover a number of damped-Lyman alpha systems as well as improve the (very curious) statistics of strong intervening Mg II absorbers towards GRB sitelines.

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