The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts

By B. Metzger, D. Giannios, T. Thompson, N. Bucciantini, E. Quataert. 2010

383 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Long duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) originate from the core collapse of massive stars, but the identity of the central engine remains elusive. Previous work has shown that rapidly spinning, strongly magnetized proto-neutron stars (`millisecond proto-magnetars') produce outflows with energies, timescales, and magnetizations sigma_0 (maximum Lorentz factor) that are consistent with those required to produce long GRBs. Here we extend this work in order to construct a self-consistent model that directly connects the properties of the central engine to the observed prompt emission. Just after the launch of the supernova shock, a wind heated by neutrinos is driven from the proto-magnetar. The outflow is collimated into a bipolar jet by its interaction with the star. As the magnetar cools, the wind becomes ultra-relativistic and Poynting-flux dominated (sigma_0 >> 1) on a timescale comparable to that required for the jet to clear a cavity through the star. Although the site and mechanism of the prompt emission are debated, we calculate the emission predicted by two models: magnetic dissipation and internal shocks. Our results favor the magnetic dissipation model in part because it predicts a relatively constant `Band' spectral peak energy E_peak with time during the GRB. The jet baryon loading decreases abruptly when the neutron star becomes transparent to neutrinos at t ~ 10-100 seconds. Jets with ultra-high magnetization cannot effectively accelerate and dissipate their energy, suggesting this transition ends the prompt emission and may explain the steep decay phase that follows. We assess several phenomena potentially related to magnetar birth, including low luminosity GRBs, thermal-rich GRBs/X-ray Flashes, very luminous supernovae, and short duration GRBs with extended emission.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5c9a98a0ec13bc672483fdcc96fa91019c758b31

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. E. Quataert
5. Pawan Kumar
6. T. Thompson
7. D. Kasen
8. A. Piro

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. B. Metzger
2. A. Tchekhovskoy
3. Bing Zhang
4. E. Berger
5. E. Quataert
6. Ramesh Narayan
7. Pawan Kumar
8. T. Thompson

Citations in the corpus

• A Reconnection Switch to Trigger gamma-Ray Burst Jet Dissipation (2010, background): “These issues make it potentially more difficult for the magnetar to operate as both an efficient and a powerful engine of a highly magnetized ultrarelativistic jet (Metzger, Thompson & Quataert 2007; Bucciantini et al. 2008b; Metzger et al. 2011).”
• On the nature of supernovae Ib and Ic (2012, background): “Furthermore, it would not conflict with the prerequisites of the collapsar model (Woosley 1993) or those of the protomagnetar model (Wheeler et al. 2000; Metzger et al. 2011) of long-duration GRBs. (xi) We identify a negative feedback on non-thermal effects.”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, background): “cally or via neutrino-annihilation-driven jets along the rotation axes. The other promising mechanism that could lead to the production of an LGRB and its hypernovae is the millisecond magnetar model [138,357,358,359]. In this scenario, the compact remnant is a 35 Figure 18: The death of a massive s”
• A Decade of Gamma-Ray Bursts Observed by Fermi-LAT: The Second GRB Catalog (2019, methodology): “The observations of LAT GRBs therefore significantly constrain the parameter space of the models with a magnetar as the GRB central engine (see, e.g., Duncan & Thompson 1992; Usov 1992; Metzger et al. 2011).”
• An Embedded X-Ray Source Shines through the Aspherical AT 2018cow: Revealing the Inner Workings of the Most Luminous Fast-evolving Optical Transients (2018, background): “195 2 10 10 erg, 26j j 4 k,0 49 50 g ~ --( ) ( ) where E 10k,0 51 erg is the initial kinetic energy of the explosion and γj is the jet Lorentz factor while propagating through the star (values of γj∼ 2–3 are required to produce jet opening angles similar to those of GRBs; Mizuta & Ioka 2013).”
• On the diversity of superluminous supernovae: ejected mass as the dominant factor (2015, methodology): “Magnetar/engine-powered models have been invoked to explain both the high luminosities in SLSNe and the relativistic jets in GRB-SNe (Thompson, Chang & Quataert 2004; Metzger et al. 2011).”
• Optical and X-ray emission from stable millisecond magnetars formed from the merger of binary neutron stars (2013, background): “…some short GRBs, such as the temporally ‘extended emission’ observed on timescales of minutes after the GRB (Gao & Fan 2006; Metzger et al. 2008; Metzger et al. 2011; Bucciantini et al. 2012) and the X-ray ‘plateaus’ observed on longer timescale ∼ 102 − 104 s (Rowlinson et al. 2013; Gompertz…”
• The birth of black holes: neutron star collapse times, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts (2014, background): “…assume all protomagnetars have poloidal magnetic field strengths between 1015 and 3 × 1016 G, where the lower limit is inferred from the need for collimated jets to explain the burst emission (Thompson 2007), and the upper limit is based on magnetic field stability arguments (Metzger et al. 2011).”
• The prompt-afterglow connection in gamma-ray bursts: a comprehensive statistical analysis of Swift X-ray light curves (2012, background): “They basically divide into two classes: accretion onto a newly born black hole which directly powers the observed X-ray light-curve (Kumar et al. 2008) or power from a rapidly rotating magnetar (see e.g. Metzger et al. 2011 and references therein).”
• Relativistic MHD simulations of core-collapse GRB jets: 3D instabilities and magnetic dissipation (2015, background): “…striped wind like magnetic field configurations, 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…”
• A unified picture of Galactic and cosmological fast radio bursts (2020, background): “…long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs), superluminous supernovae (SLSNe, e.g., Metzger et al. 2017), or mergers of neutron stars (e.g., Margalit et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2020), so that they have relatively short (e.g. millisecond) periods at births (Usov 1992; Zhang & Mészáros 2001; Metzger et al. 2011).”
• The diversity of transients from magnetar birth in core collapse supernovae (2015, background): “Therefore, if a single ULGRB can be unambiguously associated with magnetar birth, this strengthens the hypothesis that many (or all) LGRBs are magnetar-powered (Thompson & Duncan 1993; Thompson et al. 2004; Metzger et al. 2011; Mazzali et al. 2014).”
• Neutrino-dominated accretion flows as the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (2017, background): “…by a hyperaccretion disk (e.g., Paczyński 1991; Narayan et al. 1992; MacFadyen & Woosley 1999) or a quickly rotating magnetar (or protomagnetar, e.g., Usov 1992; Dai & Lu 1998; Zhang & Mészáros 2001; Dai et al. 2006; Metzger et al. 2011; Lü & Zhang 2014; Lü et al. 2015; Li et al. 2016).”
• Signatures of magnetar central engines in short GRB light curves (2013, background): “The equations of vacuum dipolespindown given above neglect the enhanced angular momentum losses due to neutrino-driven mass loss, which are important at early times after the magnetar forms (Metzger et al. 2011).”
• Superluminous supernovae: 56Ni power versus magnetar radiation (2012, background): “They are also routinelyproduced at low metallicity by massive-star evolution with fast rotation (Woosley & Heger 2006; Georgy et al. 2009), perhaps providing an alternate channel to black-hole formation (Dessart et al. 2008; Metzger et al. 2011; Dessart et al. 2012).”
• Short GRBs with Extended Emission from Magnetar Birth: Jet Formation and Collimation (2011, methodology): “In general, however, the magnetar outflow becomes ultra-relativistic relatively abruptly, such that this distinction is well-defined (Metzger et al. 2011). the confining ejecta is significantly less massive and dense than in the core collapse case.”