English

Vacuum discharge as a possible source of gamma-ray bursts

Astrophysics 2009-10-31 v2

Abstract

We propose that spontaneous particle--anti-particle pair creations from the discharged vacuum caused by the strong interactions in dense matter are major sources of γ\gamma-ray bursts. Two neutron star collisions or black hole-neutron star mergers at cosmological distance could produce a compact object with its density exceeding the critical density for pair creations. The emitted anti-particles annihilate with corresponding particles at the ambient medium. This releases a large amount of energy. We discuss the spontaneous ppˉp\bar{p} pair creations within two neutron star collision and estimate the exploded energy from ppˉp\bar{p} annihilation processes. The total energy could be around 1051105310^{51} - 10^{53} erg depending on the impact parameter of colliding neutron stars. This value fits well into the range of the initial energy of the most energetic γ\gamma-ray bursts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9912303,
  title  = {Vacuum discharge as a possible source of gamma-ray bursts},
  author = {G. Mao and S. Chiba and W. Greiner and K. Oyamatsu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9912303},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages, Latex, 2 figures included; replaced by the revised version, Int. J. Mod. Phys. E in press