In this chapter two kinds of GRB quest are presented.
As regards the on-line quest, detailed descriptions of the data flow and of the automatic alert system are given; the importance of the on-line search, when compared with the off-line one, mainly resides in the possibility of discovering GRBs, otherwise missed, in time for a prompt localization and observation of afterglows, when detectable; actually, this happened in several cases by means of BeppoSAX/WFCs and/or the InterPlanetary Network (IPN).
Some results on the sample of automatically on-line detected events are discussed, as the GRB mean rate. Also some outstanding cases of on-line detected bursts are mentioned. Finally, an outline of the near future incoming developments about the quest algorithms and, above all, about the possibility of automatic localizations for, at least, the brightest GRBs, by means of the GRBM response matrix developed from the Monte Carlo model of the BeppoSAX payload, is given.
The second part of this chapter focuses on the off-line quest: first, the pieces of information for each GRB candidate that are automatically computed are described. In particular, we discuss the the refinements adopted for the off-line case. This off-line work is the follow-up of preliminary investigations, whose partial results have been already presented in other previous works ([Guidorzi et al., 2000a], [Guidorzi et al., 2000b], and [Guidorzi et al., 2001a]). Some similar works have been carried out on the BATSE/CGRO archive, looking for nontriggered events: in particular, we cite the two most relevant off-line searches: by Kommers et al. ([Kommers et al., 1997], [Kommers et al., 1999], [Kommers et al., 2000], [Kommers et al., 2001]) and by Stern et al. ( [Stern et al., 1999a], [Stern et al., 1999b], [Stern et al., 2000a], [Stern et al., 2000b], [Stern et al., 2000c], [Tikhomirova and Stern, 2000]), although there are several differences between these searches and ours, connected with the differences between the two experiments (BATSE and GRBM data, respectively), especially concerning the detectors and, therefore, the nature of the available data.
Particular attention has been paid to the GRBs detected with the GRBM in common with BATSE and, in general, with all the other experiments providing informations about the incoming directions, like the WFCs, the IPN, the ASM/RXTE (All Sky Monitor on board the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite). This common sample of GRBs has been used both to understand what kinds of GRBs are detected by our algorithm and to test the localication capabilities of the GRBM.