Related papers: Photon Splitting in Soft Gamma Repeaters
The physical origin of gamma-ray burst (GRB) prompt emission (photosphere or synchrotron) is still subject to debate after five decades. Here, firstly we find that many observed characteristics of 15 long GRBs, which have the highest prompt…
Electron-positron pair production by collision of photons is investigated in view of application to pulsar physics. We compute the absorption rate of individual gamma-ray photons by an arbitrary anisotropic distribution of softer photons,…
Compton scattering is a key process shaping spectra formation and accretion flow dynamics in accreting strongly magnetized neutron stars. A strong magnetic field affects the scattering cross section and makes it dependent on photon energy,…
We propose a model to account for the bursts from soft gamma repeaters (SGRs) and anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) in which quantum electrodynamics (QED) plays a vital role. In our theory, that we term ``fast-mode breakdown,''…
Gamma-ray bursts are generally considered to be the result of internal shocks generated in an inhomogeneous relativistic outflow that arises from a fireball. In such shocks, the Fermi acceleration of protons is naturally expected to be at…
Assuming that AXPs and SGRs accrete matter from a fallback disk, we attempt to explain both the soft and the hard X-ray emission as the result of the accretion process. We also attempt to explain their radio emission or the lack of it. We…
We investigate the Smith-Purcell emission produced by electron- or ion-beam-driven coherent excitation of nuclei arranged in periodic crystal lattices. The excitation and subsequent radiative decay of the nuclei can leave the target in the…
We discuss properties of the expected radio emission from Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters (SGRs) during their bursting activity in the framework of the model of Thompson, Lyutikov and Kulkarni (2002), in which the high energy emission is powered…
Synchrotron radiation of relativistic electrons is an important radiation mechanism in many astrophysical sources. In the sources where the synchrotron cooling time scale $t_c$ is shorter than the dynamical time scale $t_{dyn}$, electrons…
We review the hypothesis that the acceleration of protons at internal shocks in Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) could be the origin of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) observed at earth, E_max > 10^19 eV. We find that, even though protons…
During supernova explosions, strange stars with almost bare quark surfaces may be formed. Under certain conditions, these stars could be rapidly spun down by the torque exerted by the fossil disks formed from the fall-back materials. They…
Ultra-intense laser pulses can create sufficiently strong fields to probe quantum electrodynamics effects in a novel regime. By colliding a 60 GeV electron bunch with a laser pulse focussed to the maximum achievable intensity of $10^{23}$…
Soft Gamma Repeaters are widely believed to occur as isotropic Magnetar explosion. We suggest on the contrary that they may be described by thin collimated spinning and precessing Gamma Jets flashing and blazing along the line of sight. The…
We show that an extragalactic jet with a velocity shear gives rise to Fermi like acceleration process for photons scattering withing the shear layers of the jet. Such photons then gain energy to produce a high energy power law. These power…
Beams of ultra-relativistic electrons in blazar jets develop pair cascades interacting with ambient soft photons. Employing coupled kinetic equations with escape terms, we model the unsaturated pair cascade spectrum. We assume that the…
We demonstrate that the rapid spectral variability of prompt GRBs is an inherent property of radiation emitted from shock-generated, highly anisotropic small-scale magnetic fields. We interpret the hard-to-soft evolution and the correlation…
We develop the theory of jitter radiation from GRB shocks containing small-scale magnetic fields and propagating at an angle with respect to the line of sight. We demonstrate that the spectra vary considerably: the low-energy photon index,…
If ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are accelerated at astrophysical point sources, the identification of such sources can be achieved if there is some kind of radiation at observable wavelengths that may be associated with the…
Roughly half of the observed gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) may arise from the shocking of an ultra-relativistic shell of protons with the interstellar medium (ISM). Any neutrons originally present in the GRB fireball may, depending on the…
Gamma-ray luminosities of some quasar-associated blazars imply jet powers reaching values comparable to the accretion power even if assuming very strong Doppler boosting and very high efficiency of gamma-ray production. With much lower…