Gamma-ray burst models: General requirements and predictions

Whatever the ultimate energy source of gamma-ray bursts turns out to be, the resulting sequence of physical events is likely to lead to a fairly generic, almost unavoidable scenario: a relativistic fireball that dissipates its energy after it has become optically thin. This is expected both for cosmological and halo distances. Here we explore the observational motivation of this scenario, and the consequences of the resulting models for the photon production in different wavebands, the energetics and the time structure of classical gamma-ray bursters.