Can all breaks in GRB afterglows be explained by jet effects?

Abstract

Whether gamma-ray bursts are highly beamed or not is a very important question, since it has been pointed out that the beaming will lead to a sharp break in the afterglow light curves during the ultra-relativistic phase, with the breaking point determined by $\Gamma \sim 1/{\theta }_0$, where $\Gamma$ is the bulk Lorentz factor and ${\theta }_0$ is the initial half opening angle of the ejecta, and such a break is claimed to be present in the light curves of some GRBs. In this paper we will examine whether all the observed breaks in GRB afterglow light curves can be explained by jet effects. Here we present a detailed calculation of the jet evolution and emission, and have obtained a simple formula of bulk Lorentz factor evolution. We show that the light curves are very smoothly steepened by jet effect, and the shape of the light curve is determined by only one parameter -- $(E/n{)}^{1/8}{\theta }_0^{3/4}$, where E and n are the fireball energy and surrounding medium density. We find that for GRB990123 and GRB991216, the jet model can approximately fit their light curves, and the values of $(E_{51}/n_1{)}^{1/8}{\theta }_0^{3/4}$ are about 0.17 and 0.22 respectively. While for GRB990510, GRB000301c, GRB000926 and GRB010222, their light curves cannot be fitted by the jet model, which suggests that the breaks may be caused by some other reasons, jet should be not the unique reason.

Latex, revised version accepted by MNRAS

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