Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Scientific paper
2009-05-12
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
7 pages, 9 figures, with added fig. to compare with observations, MNRAS, 400, 330 (2009)
Scientific paper
Recent particle-in-cell simulations suggest that a large fraction of the energy dissipated in a relativistic shock is deposited into a Maxwellian distribution of electrons that is connected to the high-energy power-law tail. Here, we explore the observational implications of such a mixed thermal-nonthermal particle distribution for the afterglow and prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts. When the Maxwellian component dominates the energy budget, the afterglow lightcurves show a very steep decline phase followed by a more shallow decay when the characteristic synchrotron frequency crosses the observed band. The steep decay appears in the X-rays at ~100 sec after the burst and is accompanied by a characteristic hard-soft-hard spectral evolution that has been observed in a large number of early afterglows. If internal shocks produce a similar mixed electron distribution, a bump is expected at the synchrotron peak of the nu*f_nu spectrum.
Giannios Dimitrios
Spitkovsky Anatoly
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