Implications of Understanding Short Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by {\it Swift}

Understand

In an effort to understand the puzzle of classifying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), we perform a systematic study of {\it Swift} GRBs and investigate several short GRB issues.

• Though short GRBs have a short ($\lesssim2$ s) prompt duration as monitored by the Burst Alert Telescope, the composite light curves including both the prompt and afterglow emission suggest that most of the short GRBs have a similar radiative feature to long GRBs.
• Further, some well-studied short GRBs might also have an intrinsically long prompt duration, which renders them as a type of short GRB imposters.
• Genuine short GRBs detected by {\it Swift} might be rare that discriminating the observed short GRBs is, not surprisingly, troublesome.