English

Gamma-ray Burst Spectrum with a Time-dependent Injection Rate of High-energy Electrons

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2020-04-22 v1

Abstract

Although the physical origin of prompt emission in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) remains inconclusive, previous studies have considered the synchrotron radiation of relativistic electrons as a promising mechanism. These works usually adopted a invariable injection rate of electrons (QQ) which may be discordant with that in a Poynting-flux dominated jet. In a Poynting-flux dominated jet (e.g., ICMART model, Zhang & Yan 2011), the number of magnetic reconnections occurred simultaneously may grow rapidly with time and results in an increase of QQ with time. This paper is dedicated to study the synchrotron radiation spectrum in this scenario. It is found that the radiation spectrum would obviously get harder if an increasing QQ is adopted and a Band-like radiation spectrum can be obtained if the increase of QQ is fast enough. The latter is related to the fact that a bump-shape rather than a power-law spectrum appears in the low-energy regime of the obtained electron spectrum. This effect can strongly harden the low-energy radiation spectrum. It indicates that an increasing QQ can help to alleviate the "fast-cooling problem" of synchrotron radiation for GRBs. Our studies also reveal that a Poynting-flux dominated jet with a large emission radius, a small length of the magnetic reconnection region, or a low-minimum energy of injected electron would prefer to form a Band-like radiation spectrum. We suggest that the Band spectrum found in GRBs may be the synchrotron emission of the electrons with a bump-shape distribution in its low-energy regime.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.12231,
  title  = {Gamma-ray Burst Spectrum with a Time-dependent Injection Rate of High-energy Electrons},
  author = {Kuan Liu and Da-Bin Lin and Kai Wang and Li Zhou and Xiang-Gao Wang and En-Wei Liang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.12231},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters