Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Scientific paper
2010-05-25
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Accepted for publication in ApJ
Scientific paper
We study the spectrum of high frequency radiation emerging from mildly dissipative photospheres of long-duration gamma-ray burst outflows. Building on the results of recent numerical investigations, we assume that electrons are heated impulsively to mildly relativistic energies by either shocks or magnetic dissipation at Thomson optical depths of several and subsequently cool by inverse Compton, scattering off the thermal photons of the photosphere. We show that even in the absence of magnetic field and non-thermal leptons, inverse Compton scattering produces power-law tails that extend from the peak of the thermal radiation, at several hundred keV, to several tens of MeV, and possibly up to GeV energies. The slope of the high-frequency power-law is predicted to vary substantially during a single burst, and the model can easily account for the diversity of high-frequency spectra observed by BATSE. Our model works in baryonic as well as in magnetically dominated outflows, as long as the magnetic field component is not overwhelmingly dominant.
Begelman Mitchell C.
Lazzati Davide
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