Post-Swift Gamma-ray Burst Science and Capabilities Needed to EXIST

Abstract

The exhilerating results from Swift in its first year of operations have opened a new era of exploration of the high energy universe. The surge to higher redshifts of the Gamma-ray bursts now imaged with increased sensitivity establishes them as viable cosmic probes of the early universe. Wide-field coded aperture imaging with solid-state pixel detectors (Cd-Zn-Te) has been also established as the optimum approach for GRB discovery and location as well as to conduct sensitive full-sky hard X-ray sky surveys. I outline the current and future major science questions likely to dominate the post-Swift era for GRBs and several related disciplines and the mission requirements to tackle these. The EXIST mission, under study for NASA's Black Hole Finder Probe (BHFP) in the Beyond Einstein Program, could achieve these objectives as the Next Generation GRB Mission with `ultimate' sensitivity and wide-field survey capability. Analysis tools for processing Swift/BAT slew data are under development at CfA and will both test EXIST scanning imaging and provide new data on GRBs and transients.