Spectral Evolution of Gamma Ray Bursts and the "Death Line" of the Synchrotron Shock Model

Abstract

I calculate spectral evolution series for pulses of GRBs, in the BATSE spectral range, for continuous particle injection and cooling by synchrotron, inverse Compton, and adiabatic expansion. The hydrodynamic properties of the relativistic outflow are homogeneous across the emitting region which is a conical jet. The flow is viewed at an angle off its symmetry axis; time delays are taken into account. I discuss the low energy slope part of the spectrum, in view of the recent claim of photon slopes in bright BATSE bursts that are inconsistent with the optically thin synchrotron shock model (SSM).

2 pages, 1 figure, accepted for bublication in A&AS, Conference Proc. "Gamma Ray Bursts in the Afterglow Era" held in Rome, November 1998

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Theory of "Jitter" Radiation from Small-Scale Random Magnetic Fields and Prompt Emission from Gamma-Ray Burst Shocks
• Prompt and delayed emission properties of Gamma-Ray Bursts observed with BeppoSAX
• Synchrotron Radiation as the Source of Gamma-Ray Burst Spectra
• Extremely hard GRB spectra prune down the forest of emission models
• Spectral catalogue of bright gamma-ray bursts detected with the BeppoSAX/GRBM