Discerning emission components in early afterglow data and constraining the initial lorentz factor of long grb fireball

En Wei Liang*, Houjun Lü, Shuang Xi Yi, Bing Zhang, Bin Bin Zhang, Jin Zhang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

We prove that both the canonical and single power-law decay X-ray afterglow lightcurves of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed with the Swift X-ray telescope may be an emission component radiated by external shocks prior to the GRB trigger. Our systematical analysis on both the early optical and X-ray afterglow data also indicates that they might be from different components. The detected optical emission possibly is dominated by the afterglow of the GRB fireball. The X-ray afterglows may be detected for some GRBs, but most of the detected X-rays for most GRBs are likely dominated by the prior X-ray component. With the deceleration feature in the early optical afterglow data, we estimate the initial Lorentz factors of the GRBs and discover a tight relation of the Lorentz factor to the isotropic gamma-ray energy.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1955-1959
Number of pages5
JournalInternational Journal of Modern Physics D
Volume20
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Gamma-ray bursts
  • Gamma-ray observations
  • Nonthermal radiation mechanism

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