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arXiv · 1906.00502

Description of atypical bursts seen slightly off-axis

N. Fraija·F. De Colle·P. Veres·S. Dichiara·R. Barniol Duran·A. C. Caligula do E. S. Pedreira·A. Galvan-Gamez·B. Betancourt Kamenetskaia
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Abstract

The detection of gravitational waves together with their electromagnetic counterpart, in the gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A, marked a new era of multi-messenger astronomy. Several theoretical models have been proposed to explain the atypical behavior of this event. Recently, it was shown that the multi-wavelength afterglow of GRB 170817A was consistent with a synchrotron forward-shock model when the outflow was viewed off-axis, decelerated in a uniform medium and parametrized through a power-law velocity distribution. Motivated by the upper limits on the very-high-energy emission, and the stratified medium in the close vicinity of a binary neutron star merger proposed to explain the gamma-ray flux in the short GRB 150101B, we extend the mechanism proposed to explain GRB 170817A to a more general scenario deriving the synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) and synchrotron forward-shock model when the off-axis outflow is decelerated in a uniform and stratified circumburst density. As particular cases, we show that the delayed and long-lasting afterglow emission observed in GRB 080503, GRB140903A, GRB 150101B, and GRB 160821B could be interpreted by a similar scenario to the one used to describe GRB 170817A. In addition, we show that the proposed scenario agrees with the MAGIC, Fermi-LAT and H.E.S.S upper limits on gamma-ray emission from GRB 160821B and GRB 170817A.

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N. Fraija, F. De Colle, P. Veres, S. Dichiara, R. Barniol Duran, A. C. Caligula do E. S. Pedreira, A. Galvan-Gamez, B. Betancourt Kamenetskaia. 2020-04-20. Description of atypical bursts seen slightly off-axis. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357%2Fab88b7

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