Gamma-ray bursts and their use as cosmic probes
  Since the launch of the highly successful and ongoing Swift mission, the
field of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has undergone a revolution. The arcsecond GRB
localizations available within just a few minutes of the GRB alert has
signified the continual sampling of the GRB evolution through the prompt to
afterglow phases revealing unexpected flaring and plateau phases, the first
detection of a kilonova coincident with a short GRB, and the identification of
samples of low-luminosity, ultra-long, and highly dust extinguished GRBs. The
increased numbers of GRB afterglows, GRB-supernova detections, redshifts, and
host galaxy associations has greatly improved our understanding of what
produces and powers these immense, cosmological explosions. Nevertheless, more
high quality data often also reveal greater complexity. In this review, I
summarize some of the milestones made in GRB research during the Swift era, and
how previous widely accepted theoretical models have had to adapt to
accommodate the new wealth of observational data.
