Swift Late GRB Emission and GLAST

Recent observations of early X-ray afterglows of GRBs by the Swift satellite - prior to t ∼ 103s but well after the end of the burst - show most GRBs to be followed by highly time and energy variable emission. This was unexpected prior to Swift and physical mechanisms remain largely mysterious. The spectra exhibit a strong hard-to-soft evolution which tracks the flux, consistent with a well-established hardness intensity correlation for the prompt Gamma-ray emission. The light curves show dramatic flares or rapid logarithmic time decays. In the simplest interpretation, this emission is GRB-like and indicates a long lived energy source with the possibility of interacting shells of widely varying bulk Lorentz factor. We review the phenomenology in order to ascertain how GLAST observations of this early emission, either detected directly or through the detection of inverse-Compton emission, can help to rule on possible models