Jitter radiation in gamma-ray bursts and their afterglows: emission and self-absorption

Abstract

Relativistic electrons moving into a highly tangled magnetic field emit jitter radiation. We present a detailed computation of the jitter radiation spectrum, including self-absorption, for electrons inside Weibel-like shock generated magnetic fields. We apply our results to the case of the prompt and afterglow emission of gamma-ray bursts. We show that jitter emission can reproduce most of the observed features with some important differences with respect to standard synchrotron, especially in the frequency range between the self-absorption and the peak frequency. We discuss the similarities and differences between jitter and synchrotron and discuss experiments that can disentangle the two mechanisms.

12 pages, 7 postscript figures. Figures, discussion, and references updated. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (2)

• Gamma-Ray Bursts: Progress, Problems & Prospects
• Long Term Evolution of Magnetic Turbulence in Relativistic Collisionless Shocks: Electron-Positron Plasmas

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Radio Emission by Soliton Formation in Relativistically Hot Streaming Pulsar Pair Plasmas
• Jitter radiation images, spectra, and light curves from a relativistic spherical blastwave
• Jitter radiation: towards TeV-photons of gamma-ray bursts
• Jitter Mechanism as a Kind of Coherent Radiation: Constrained by the GRB 221009A Emission at 18 TeV
• Radiation from relativistic jets