English

Cooling waves in pair plasma

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2017-10-03 v1

Abstract

We consider structure and emission properties of a pair plasma fireball that cools due to radiation. At temperatures T0.5mec2T \geq 0.5 m_e c^2 the cooling takes a form of clearly defined cooling wave, whereby the temperature and pair density experience a sharp drop within a narrow region. The surface temperature, corresponding to the location where the optical depth to infinity reaches unity, never falls much below 0.1mec2500.1 m_e c^2 \approx 50 keV. The propagation velocity of the cooling wave is much smaller than the speed of light and decreases with increasing bulk temperature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.00373,
  title  = {Cooling waves in pair plasma},
  author = {Maxim Lyutikov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.00373},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:00:13.456Z