Gamma-Ray Bursts and New Physics

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBS) are the brightest explosions observed. After a serendipitous discovery and thirty years of search we begin to understand their origin (type Ic supernovae for long bursts and neutron star mergers for short ones) and the relativistic outflow that is at the basis of their operation. While the research on the nature of GRBs still goes on we turn to application of GRBs to study other phenomena. A lot have been said about the potential usage of GRBs to determine the star formation and the conditions at the early universe. GRBs have an enormous potential to explore new regimes of ultra-relativistic flow and of very high magnetic fields. Here we discuss two other applications of GRBs that involve, in the spirit of this conference, new physics - identification of GRBs as sources of gravitational radiation and using the arrival times of photons at different energies to set limits on Lorentz invariance violation that could arise from quantum gravity effects.