TP-34

How GRBs Could Determine Cosmology

Thulsi Wickramasinghe (Department of Physics, The College of New Jersey) Robert Nemiroff (Department of Physics, The Michigan Technological University)

It is known that the population of gamma-ray bursts is consistent with a standard cosmological model with Omega = 1. There have been recent investigations, both theoretical and observational, to argue for a non vanishing cosmological constant. As GRBs are one of the few types of objects seen at high redshifts, GRBs have the potential to tell us a great deal about the geometry of our universe. We find that most popular universe geometries can fit available data acceptably. As an exercise, however, we searched for the best fit cosmology to all GRB data currently available. More importantly, we speculate on what types and amounts of future GRB data would be necessary to definitively determine our universe's geometry.