Gamma Ray Burst Section of the White Paper on the Status and Future of Ground-based TeV Gamma-ray Astronomy

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current status and future prospects of ground-based TeV gamma-ray astronomy for observing gamma ray bursts, emphasizing the potential for groundbreaking discoveries in high-energy astrophysics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of past efforts and highlights the potential of future ground-based experiments to detect the highest energy emissions from GRBs.

Findings

Future experiments could detect very high energy GRB emissions.

Detection would impact GRB models and cosmic ray origin theories.

Current efforts have laid groundwork for significant advances.

Abstract

This is a report on the findings of the gamma ray burst working group for the white paper on the status and future of TeV gamma-ray astronomy. The white paper is an APS commissioned document, and the overall version has also been released and can be found on astro-ph. This detailed section of the white paper discusses the status of past and current attempts to observe gamma ray bursts at GeV-TeV energies. We concentrate on the potential of future ground-based gamma-ray experiments to observe the highest energy emission ever recorded for GRBs, particularly for those that are nearby and have high Lorentz factors in the GRB jet. It is clear that major advances are possible and that the detection of very high energy emission would have strong implications for GRB models, as well as cosmic ray origin.