DETECTION OF A THERMAL SPECTRAL COMPONENT IN THE PROMPT EMISSION OF GRB 100724B

By S. Guiriec, V. Connaughton, M. Briggs, Michael Burgess, F. Ryde, F. Daigne, P. Mészáros, A. Goldstein, J. Mcenery, N. Omodei and 22 more. 2010

159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Observations of GRB 100724B with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor find that the spectrum is dominated by the typical Band functional form, which is usually taken to represent a non-thermal emission component, but also includes a statistically highly significant thermal spectral contribution. The simultaneous observation of the thermal and non-thermal components allows us to confidently identify the two emission components. The fact that these seem to vary independently favors the idea that the thermal component is of photospheric origin while the dominant non-thermal emission occurs at larger radii. Our results imply either a very high efficiency for the non-thermal process or a very small size of the region at the base of the flow, both quite challenging for the standard fireball model. These problems are resolved if the jet is initially highly magnetized and has a substantial Poynting flux.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bf6f59338a6e4509c922a40b095ed6928d85ee67

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Pawan Kumar
3. L. Amati
4. A. Pe’er
5. E. Berger
6. F. Ryde
7. G. Ghisellini
8. E. Liang

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Pawan Kumar
3. G. Ghisellini
4. L. Amati
5. T. Piran
6. G. Ghirlanda
7. F. Ryde
8. L. Maraschi

Citations in the corpus

• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “The superposition of the first two components (I and II) have been seen in several GRBs: 100724B (Guiriec et al., 2011), 110721A (Axelsson et al., 2012), and 120323A (Guiriec et al., 2013).”
• The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, design and expected performances (2017, background): “It is worth noting that a number of recent studies have found evidence of a sub-dominant thermal emission in the prompt emission spectrum (Ryde et al., 2010; Guiriec et al., 2011; Basak & Rao, 2015).”
• A theory of photospheric emission from relativistic, collimated outflows (2012, methodology): “In some GRBs observed by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (GRB 100724B, Guiriec et al. 2011 and GRB 110721A, Axelsson et al. 2012), a spectral “bump” is significantly detected at energies below the main peak.”