(Abridged) The two high-redshift gamma-ray bursts, GRB 080913 at z=6.7 and GRB 090423 at z=8.3, recently detected by Swift appear as intrinsically short, hard GRBs. They could have been recognized by BATSE as short/hard GRBs should they have occurred at z <= 1. We perform a more thorough investigation on two physically distinct types (Type I/II) of cosmological GRBs and their observational characteristics. We reiterate the definitions of Type I/II GRBs and review the observational criteria and their physical motivations. Contrary to the traditional approach of assigning the physical category based on the gamma-ray properties (duration, hardness, and spectral lag), we take an alternative approach to define the Type I and Type II Gold Samples using several criteria that are more directly related to the GRB progenitors, and study the properties of the two Gold Samples and compare them with the traditional long/soft and short/hard samples. We find that the Type II Gold Sample reasonably tracks the long/soft population, although it includes several intrinsically short (shorter than 1s in the rest frame) GRBs. The Type I Gold Sample only has 5 GRBs, 4 of which are not strictly short but have extended emission. Other short/hard GRBs detected in the Swift era represent the BATSE short/hard sample well, but it is unclear whether all of them belong to Type I. We suggest that some (probably even most) high-luminosity short/hard GRBs instead belong to Type II. We suggest that GRB 080913 and GRB 090423 are more likely Type II events. We re-emphasize the importance of invoking multiple observational criteria, and cautiously propose an operational procedure to infer the physical origin of a given GRB with available multiple observational criteria, with various caveats laid out.

We present a detailed report of the connection between long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their accompanying supernovae (SNe). The discussion presented here places emphasis on how observations, and the modelling of observations, have constrained what we know about GRB-SNe. We discuss their photometric and spectroscopic properties, their role as cosmological probes, including their measured luminosity–decline relationships, and how they can be used to measure the Hubble constant. We present a statistical summary of their bolometric properties and use this to determine the properties of the “average” GRB-SN. We discuss their geometry and consider the various physical processes that are thought to power the luminosity of GRB-SNe and whether differences exist between GRB-SNe and the SNe associated with ultra-long-duration GRBs. We discuss how observations of their environments further constrain the physical properties of their progenitor stars and give a brief overview of the current theoretical paradigms of their central engines. We then present an overview of the radioactively powered transients that have been photometrically associated with short-duration GRBs, and we conclude by discussing what additional research is needed to further our understanding of GRB-SNe, in particular the role of binary-formation channels and the connection of GRB-SNe with superluminous SNe.

High-energy photons from the Crab Nebula: The Crab Nebula contains a pulsar that excites the surrounding gas to emit high-energy radiation. The combination of the pulsar's youth and nearby location makes the nebula the brightest gamma-ray source in the sky. The LHAASO Collaboration report observations of this source at energies of tera– to peta–electron volts, extending the spectrum of this prototypical object. They combine these data with observations at lower energies to model the physics of the emission process. The multiwave-length data can be explained by a combination of synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering. Science , abg5137, this issue p. 425

We present a systematic analysis of the spectral and temporal properties of 17 GRBs co-detected by GBM and LAT on board the Fermi satellite by May 2010. We performed a time-resolved spectral analysis of all the bursts with the finest temporal resolution allowed by statistics, in order to avoid temporal smearing of different spectral components. We found that the time-resolved spectra of 14 out of 17 GRBs are best modeled with the Band function over the entire Fermi spectral range, which may suggest a common origin for emissions detected by LAT and GBM. GRB 090902B and GRB 090510 require the superposition between an MeV component and an extra power law component, with the former having a sharp cutoff above E_p. For GRB 090902B, this MeV component becomes progressively narrower as the time bin gets smaller, and can be fit with a Planck function as the time bin becomes small enough. In general, we speculate that phenomenologically there may be three elemental spectral components : (I) a Band-function component (e.g. in GRB 080916C) that extends in a wide energy range and does not narrow with reducing time bins, which may be of the non-thermal origin; (II) a quasi-thermal component (e.g. in GRB 090902B) with the spectra progressively narrowing with reducing time bins; and (III) another non-thermal power law component extending to high energies. The spectra of different bursts may be decomposed into one or more of these elemental components. We compare this sample with the BATSE sample and investigate some correlations among spectral parameters. We discuss the physical implications of the data analysis results for GRB prompt emission, including jet compositions (matter-dominated vs. Poynting-flux-dominated outflow), emission sites (internal shock, external shock or photosphere), as well as radiation mechanisms (synchrotron, synchrotron self-Compton, or thermal Compton upscattering).

In this Letter, we propose that a fast radio burst (FRB) could originate from the magnetic interaction between double neutron stars (NSs) during their final inspiral within the framework of a unipolar inductor model. In this model, an electromotive force is induced on one NS to accelerate electrons to an ultra-relativistic speed instantaneously. We show that coherent curvature radiation from these electrons moving along magnetic field lines in the magnetosphere of the other NS is responsible for the observed FRB signal, that is, the characteristic emission frequency, luminosity, duration, and event rate of FRBs can be well understood. In addition, we discuss several implications of this model, including double-peaked FRBs and possible associations of FRBs with short-duration gamma-ray bursts and gravitational-wave events.