GRBs/CBC/FRBs: A Tale of Three Transients

Dr. Bing Zhang (University of Nevada Las Vegas)

I will discuss three exciting fields in transient astrophysics: gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), electromagnetic counterparts of compact binary coalescence (CBC) gravitational wave sources, and fast radio bursts (FRBs). I will first summarize the recent progress in constraining jet composition, energy dissipation and radiation mechanism of GRBs with the help of the Fermi GBM data and then discuss the physical implications of the ground-breaking discovery of the GW170817/GRB 170817A association.  Then I will move on to discuss other electromagnetic counterparts of different species of CBC systems, including the theoretical motivation for a magnetar-powered X-ray transient associated with an NS-NS merger and the observational evidence of such transients from the Chandra Deep Field South archival data. Finally, I will briefly discuss another type of mysterious cosmological transients named FRBs, and some possible ideas of interpreting them. Based on a comparison between the FRB and GRB fields, I will argue that there could exist non-repeating FRBs of catastrophic origins. Some possible mechanisms for generating FRBs from CBC systems will be outlined.