The Future of Fermi-LAT Gamma-ray Burst Studies with Improved Event Reconstruction

Observations of the extremely energetic Fermi-LAT GRB population over the last 5 years has led to many new insights into GRB emission mechanisms and the presences of gamma-ray afterglows. There is a major effort underway by the instrument team to upgrade the event reconstruction and analysis of Fermi LAT data, which will result in a much-improved dataset of both previously detected bursts, and those yet to be discovered, including better localizations, increased effective area at low energies, and more well-reconstructed gamma-rays. We will present predictions for the science that will be possible with this new dataset, known as Pass 8, including resolving questions regarding the presence of additional components and/or cutoffs in GRB spectra. Initial results have already been presented in Atwood et al. (2013, ApJ, 774, 76).