Echo Emission From Dust Scattering and X-Ray Afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts

Abstract

We investigate the effect of X-ray echo emission in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We find that the echo emission can provide an alternative way of understanding X-ray shallow decays and jet breaks. In particular, a shallow decay followed by a "normal" decay and a further rapid decay of X-ray afterglows can be together explained as being due to the echo from prompt X-ray emission scattered by dust grains in a massive wind bubble around a GRB progenitor. We also introduce an extra temporal break in the X-ray echo emission. By fitting the afterglow light curves, we can measure the locations of the massive wind bubbles, which will bring us closer to finding the mass loss rate, wind velocity, and the age of the progenitors prior to the GRB explosions.

25 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (18)

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Cited by in corpus (16)

• A unifying view of Gamma Ray Burst Afterglows
• A new three-parameter correlation for gamma-ray bursts with a plateau phase in the afterglow
• Jet or Shock Breakout? The Low-Luminosity GRB 060218
• GRB 090417B and its Host Galaxy: A Step Towards an Understanding of Optically-Dark Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Dust in the wind: the role of recent mass loss in long gamma-ray bursts
• Go Long, Go Deep: Finding Optical Jet Breaks for Swift-Era GRBs with the LBT
• The Dust Scattering Model Can Not Explain The Shallow X-ray Decay in GRB Afterglows
• Spectral Softening in X-ray Afterglow of GRB 130925A as Predicted by Dust Scattering Model
• A Study of the X-Ray Dust Scattering Halo of Cyg X-1 with a Cross-Correlation Method
• The effect of X-ray dust-scattering on a bright burst from the magnetar 1E 1547.0-5408
• Underlying global features of the x-ray light curves of {\it swift} gamma-ray bursts
• Effects of a low electron distribution cutoff on multiwavelength spectra and light curves of GRB afterglows
• Evidence for an anticorrelation between the duration of the shallow decay phase of GRB X-ray afterglows and redshift
• GRB X-ray plateaus as evidence that the afterglow begins before the prompt gamma-ray emission
• On the Late-Time Spectral Softening Found in X-ray Afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Expansion and Spectral Softening of the Dust Scattering Rings of GRB 221009A