Gamma Ray Bursts: Not so Much Deadlier than We Thought

Abstract

We analyze the additional effect on planetary atmospheres of recently detected gamma-ray burst afterglow photons in the range up to 1 TeV. For an Earth-like atmosphere we find that there is a small additional depletion in ozone versus that modeled for only prompt emission. We also find a small enhancement of muon flux at the planet surface. Overall, we conclude that the additional afterglow emission, even with TeV photons, does not result in a significantly larger impact over that found in past studies.

Replaced with version to be published in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Eta-Earth Revisited II: Deriving a Maximum Number of Earth-like Habitats in the Galactic Disk