2001/10/30 by Heon-Young Chang, H.-Y. Chang, C.-H. Lee +3 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Afterglow #Binary pulsar #Gamma-ray burst #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Light curve #Millisecond pulsar #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20011545
published in Astronomy and Astrophysics 381(1), L5-L8 (EDP Sciences) · 4 pages, 1 table, submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics (Letters)
arxiv created 2001/10/30 · openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate consequences of a continuously energy-injecting central engine of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow emission, assuming that a highly magnetized pulsar is left beaming in the core of a GRB progenitor. Beaming and continuous energy-injection are natural consequences of the pulsar origin of GRB afterglows. Whereas previous studies have considered continuous energy-injection from a new-born pulsar to interpret the deviation of afterglow light curves of GRBs from those with the simple power law behavior, a beaming effect, which is one of the most important aspects of pulsar emissions, is ignored in earlier investigations. We explicitly include the beaming effect and consider a change of the beaming with time due to a dynamical evolution of a new-born pulsar. We show that the magnitude of the afterglow from this fireball indeed first decreases with time, subsequently rises, and declines again. One of the most peculiar optical afterglows light curve of GRB 970508 can be accounted for by continuous energy injection with beaming due to a highly magnetized new-born pulsar. We discuss implications on such observational evidence for a pulsar.