Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglow with Continuous Energy Injection: Signature of a Highly Magnetized Millisecond Pulsar

By Bing Zhang, P. Mészáros. 2000

610 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the consequences of a continuously injecting central engine on the gamma-ray burst afterglow emission, focusing more specifically on a highly magnetized millisecond pulsar engine. For initial pulsar parameters within a certain region of the parameter space, the afterglow light curves are predicted to show a distinctive achromatic bump feature, the onset and duration of which range from minutes to months, depending on the pulsar and the fireball parameters. The detection of, or upper limits on, such features would provide constraints on the burst progenitor and on magnetar-like central engine models. An achromatic bump such as that in the GRB 000301C afterglow may be caused by a millisecond pulsar with P0 = 3.4 ms and Bp = 2.7 × 1014 G.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e029eb44909eb1ddd41e33678b45052302da885e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. Pawan Kumar
5. E. Liang
6. E. Quataert
7. Binbin Zhang
8. P. Lasky

Citations in the corpus

• On the evolution of rapidly rotating massive white dwarfs towards supernovae or collapses (2005, background): “…et al. 2000), or such fields were formed by a dynamo process right after the collapse (Duncan & Thomson 1992), the necessary conditions to form a cosmic GRBs due to electro-magnetic beaming – i.e., Ω ≈ 104 s−1 and B ≈ 1015 G – might be satisfied (cf. Wheeler et al. 2000; Zhang & Mészáros 2001).”
• A Comprehensive Analysis of Swift XRT Data. II. Diverse Physical Origins of the Shallow Decay Segment (2007, methodology): “…energy is likely through magnetic fields, either through dipolar spindown for a central millisecond pulsar (Usov 1992; Dai & Lu 1998a,b; Zhang & Mészáros 2001) or by the Blandford-Znajek mechanism for a black hole central engine (Blandford & Znajek 1977; Mészáros & Rees 1997b; Li…”
• A burst in a wind bubble and the impact on baryonic ejecta: high-energy gamma-ray flashes and afterglows from fast radio bursts and pulsar-driven supernova remnants (2016, background): “…emission has also been of interest in the literature of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) (e.g., Usov 1992; Thompson 1994; Blackman & Yi 1998; Dai & Lu 1998; Zhang & Mészáros 2001) including the “supranova” model (e.g., Vietri & Stella 1998; Inoue, Guetta & Pacini 2003), energetic SNe such as…”
• Using Gravitational-wave Observations and Quasi-universal Relations to Constrain the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars (2017, background): “Magnetic-dipole emission, in fact, is not sufficiently efficient and would act on much longer timescales (see, e.g., Zhang & Mészáros (2001)).”
• EARLY X-RAY AND OPTICAL AFTERGLOW OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE BURSTS FROM MERGERS OF BINARY NEUTRON STARS (2012, background): “Such a steady plateau with rapid decline would be a signature of a magnetar at the central engine (Zhang & Mészáros 2001; Troja et al. 2007).”
• A Comprehensive Analysis of Swift XRT Data. I. Apparent Spectral Evolution of Gamma-Ray Burst X-Ray Tails (2006, background): “…component may be related to extracting the spin energy of the central black hole (e.g., Blandford & Znajek 1977; Mészáros & Rees 1997b; Li 2000) or the spin energy of the central millisecond pulsar (through magnetic dipolar radiation, e.g., Usov 1992; Dai & Lu 1998; Zhang & Mészáros 2001).”
• The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts (2010, background): “…2007; Barkov & Komissarov 2008; Lindner et al. 2010) or a rapidly spinning, strongly magnetized NS (a ‘millisecond magnetar’; Usov 1992; Thompson 1994; Blackman & Yi 1998; Wheeler et al. 2000; Zhang & Mészáros 2001; Thompson et al. 2004; Metzger et al. 2007; Bucciantini et al. 2007, 2008, 2009).”
• BRIGHT “MERGER-NOVA” FROM THE REMNANT OF A NEUTRON STAR BINARY MERGER: A SIGNATURE OF A NEWLY BORN, MASSIVE, MILLISECOND MAGNETAR (2013, methodology): “The treatment is similar to the generic dynamic model for GRB afterglow (Huang et al. 1999), but with continuous energy injection from the magnetar (Dai & Lu 1998a,b; Zhang & Mészáros 2001).”
• Neutrino-dominated accretion flows as the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (2017, background): “Another possible product is an accreting NS or magnetar instead of a BH (e.g., Duncan & Thompson 1992; Usov 1992; Dai & Lu 1998; Zhang & Mészáros 2001; Gao & Fan 2006).”
• The Observer's Guide to the Gamma-Ray Burst-Supernova Connection (2016, background): “But what if GRB-SNe are not powered by radioactive heating, but instead via another mechanism? Could, instead, GRB-SNe be powered by a magnetar central engine [223, 224], as has been proposed for some type I SLSNe [225–227]? A prediction of themagnetar-driven SNmodel is that at late times the bolome”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “…Nagataki, 2009, 2011), and a rapidly spinning, highly magnetized, neutron star or “fast magnetar” (Usov, 1992; Thompson, 1994; Dai and Lu, 1998a; Kluźniak and Ruderman, 1998; Wheeler et al., 2000; Zhang and Mészáros, 2001a; Dai et al., 2006; Bucciantini et al., 2008, 2009; Metzger et al., 2011).”
• 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).”
• Signatures of magnetar central engines in short GRB light curves (2013, methodology): “An alternative theory is that during some GRBs a millisecond pulsar (magnetar) may be formed with enough rotational energy to prevent gravitational collapse (Usov 1992; Duncan & Thompson 1992; Dai & Lu 1998a,b; Zhang & Mészáros 2001).”
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2007, methodology): “Such a possibility is valid for thecentral engines invoking a spinning-down pulsar (Dai & Lu 1998a, b; Zhang & Mészáros 2001a) or a long-lasting BH-torus system (MacFadyen et al. 2001).”
• The unusual X-ray emission of the short Swift GRB 090515: evidence for the formation of a magnetar? (2010, methodology): “There have been predictions that in some GRBs an unstable millisecond pulsar may be formed (Duncan & Thompson 1992; Usov 1992; Dai & Lu 1998a,b; Zhang & Mészáros 2001).”
• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, methodology): “In this scenario, magnetic fields extract the rotation energy of the magnetar to power the GRB outflow (Usov 1992; Thompson 1994; Dai & Lu 1998; Wheeler et al. 2000; Zhang & Mészáros 2001; Metzger et al. 2008, 2011; Lyons et al. 2010; Bucciantini et al. 2012; Lü & Zhang 2014).”
• The birth of black holes: neutron star collapse times, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts (2014, methodology): “T IMES Rowlinson et al. (2013) analysed observations of plateaus in the Xray light curves of SGRBs, fitting protomagnetar spin-down emission models (Zhang & Mészáros 2001) to the data to infer Bp and p0.”