Collisional mechanism for gamma‐ray burst emission

By A. Beloborodov. 2009

231 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Nuclear and Coulomb collisions in gamma-ray burst (GRB) jets create a hot e ± plasma. This collisional heating starts when the jet is still opaque, and extends to the transparent region. The e ± plasma radiates its energy. As a result, a large fraction of the jet energy is converted to escaping radiation with a well-defined spectrum. The process is simulated in detail using the known rates of collisions and accurate calculations of radiative transfer in the expanding jet. The result reproduces the spectra of observed GRBs that typically peak near 1 MeV and extend to much higher energies with a photon index β ~ -2.5. This suggests that collisional heating may be the main mechanism for GRB emission.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/110cc83cb41ddcca80f62d070e175c8db25b131c

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. Pawan Kumar
4. E. Quataert
5. A. Tchekhovskoy
6. J. McKinney
7. A. Pe’er
8. Ramesh Narayan

Citations in the corpus

• Reconciling observed gamma-ray burst prompt spectra with synchrotron radiation? (2010, background): “One possibility in such cases would be the appear- ance of a quasi-thermal component of photospheric origin (Mészáros & Rees 2000; Daigne & Mochkovitch 2002; Pe’er 2008; Beloborodov 2010; Pe’er et al. 2010).”
• Relativistic MHD simulations of core-collapse GRB jets: 3D instabilities and magnetic dissipation (2015, background): “…which are susceptible to reconnection (e.g., Drenkhahn & Spruit 2002; Giannios & Spruit 2005; Metzger et al. 2011; McKinney & Uzdensky 2012), microphysical energy dissipation mechanisms (e.g., Beloborodov 2010; Mészáros & Rees 2011), and effects from intermittent engine (e.g. Granot et al. 2011).”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “This can happen, for instance, in internal shocks where protons are slowed down (and accelerated) in the collision, whereas neutrons continue moving at the speed they had before the collision (Beloborodov, 2010).”
• IceCube-Gen2: the window to the extreme Universe (2020, background): “An alternative sub-photospheric dissipation mechanism for GRBs that also results in neutrino emission has also been proposed [137–139].”
• A Reconnection Switch to Trigger gamma-Ray Burst Jet Dissipation (2010, background): “One alternative to the internal shock model includes dissipation from nuclear and Coulomb collisions (Beloborodov 2010).”
• A theory of photospheric emission from relativistic, collimated outflows (2012, background): “…has been considered as a way to modify the local comoving photon spectrum (Thompson 1994; Spruit et al. 2001; Rees & Mészáros 2005; Pe’er et al. 2005; Giannios & Spruit 2005; Pe’er et al. 2006; Lazzati et al. 2009; Beloborodov 2010; Ryde et al. 2011; Zhang & Yan 2011; Vurm et al. 2011).”
• The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts (2010, background): “Giannios (2008) shows that energy dissipated at large Thomson optical depths is thermalized, such that a portion emerges through the photosphere with a peak at ∼ MeV energies (cf. Goodman 1986; Mészáros & Rees 2000; Ramirez-Ruiz 2005; Pe’er et al. 2006; Giannios 2006; Beloborodov 2010).”
• Detection of a Spectral Break in the Extra Hard Component of GRB 090926A (2011, methodology): “In the photospheric emission model of the Band component (e.g., Mészáros & Rees 2000), the extra component could be the IC of the photospheric emission by electrons in the dissipation region at large radius (Beloborodov 2009; Gao et al. 2009; Ryde et al. 2010).”