1997/11/26 by J. R. Wilson, J. D. Salmonson, G. J. Mathews · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.55436
5 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to the Conference Proceedings of the 4th Huntsville Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium
arxiv created 1997/11/26 · openalex publication_date 1998/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
In this paper we present the preliminary results of a model for the production of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) through the compressional heating of binary neutron stars near their last stable orbit prior to merger. Recent numerical studies of the general relativistic (GR) hydrodynamics in three spatial dimensions of close neutron star binaries (NSBs) have uncovered evidence for the compression and heating of the individual neutron stars (NSs) prior to merger 12. This effect will have significant effect on the production of gravitational waves, neutrinos and, ultimately, energetic photons. The study of the production of these photons in close NSBs and, in particular, its correspondence to observed GRBs is the subject of this paper. The gamma-rays arise as follows. Compressional heating causes the neutron stars to emit neutrino pairs which, in turn, annihilate to produce a hot electron-positron pair plasma. This pair-photon plasma expands rapidly until it becomes optically thin, at which point the photons are released. We show that this process can indeed satisfy three basic requirements of a model for cosmological gamma-ray bursts: 1) sufficient gamma-ray energy release (>1051 ergs) to produce observed fluxes, 2) a time-scale of the primary burst duration consistent with that of a “classical” GRB (∼10 seconds), and 3) the peak of the photon number spectrum matches that of “classical” GRB (∼300 keV).