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UV/Optical Emission Accompanying Gamma-ray Burst

Astrophysics 2010-04-21 v2

Abstract

We discuss the possible simultaneously UV/optical emission accompanying Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We show that as long as the intrinsic spectrum of GRB can extend to \sim10 GeV or higher, there is a large amount of relativistic e±e^\pm pairs generated due to the annihilation of the soft γ\gamma-rays with the very energetic photons, which dominates over the electrons/positrons associated with the fireball, no matter the fireball is highly magnetized or not (For the highly magnetized fireball, the magnetic field is ordered, the high linear polarization of the multi-wavelength emission is expected). We find that these e±e^\pm pairs can power an UV flash with m1213thm\simeq 12-13{\rm th} magnitude, and the corresponding optical emission can be up to mR1516thm_{\rm R}\simeq15-16{\rm th} magnitude. Such bright UV emission can be detected by the upcoming satellite Swift, planned for launch in early 2004. The behavior of the optical-UV spectrum (Fνν5/2F_{\nu}\propto \nu^{5/2}) differs significantly from that of the reverse shock emission (Fννβ/2F_{\nu}\propto \nu^{-\beta/2}, β2.2\beta \simeq 2.2), which is a signature of the emission accompanying with GRB. The mild optical emission can be detected with the ROTSE-IIIa telescope system, if the response to the GRB alert is fast enough.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0403163,
  title  = {UV/Optical Emission Accompanying Gamma-ray Burst},
  author = {Y. Z. Fan. and D. M. Wei},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0403163},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

5 pages, no figures. MNRAS in press