2002/02/21 by Tsvi Piran, Piran, Tsvi, Ehud Nakar +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0202403
12 pages, 6 figures, talk given at "Compact Stars in the QCD Phase Diagram", NORDITA and Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, 15-18 August, 2001
openalex publication_date 2002/02/21 · arxiv created 2002/02/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
According to the fireball model GRBs are produced when a relativistic flow is dissipated by shocks. The questions how does a GRB's "inner engine" accelerates and collimated the relativistic flow is today the most interesting (and most difficult) open question concerning GRBs. We summarize, here, the known constrains on the "inner engines". These constrains arise mostly from the temporal structure seen in the light curves of GRBs. We discuss the well-known NO GO theorem: An explosive source cannot produce a variable GRB. We show that various attempts to find a way around this theorem are rules out by new observational data: similarity between pulse width and pulse intervals and a correlation between a pulse and the preceding interval. We show that a simple toy model explains these features in terms of the internal shocks model. We discuss the implications of these findings to GRBs' inner engines.