2002/03/20 by J. D. Salmonson, Jay D. Salmonson, J. R. Wilson +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Baryon #Gamma-ray burst #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Neutrino #Neutron star #Nuclear physics #Physics #Population #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stars #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/342311
published as Astrophys.J. 578 (2002) 310-316 · 3 pages, 3 postscript figs (2 color), to appear in "Gamma-Ray Burst and Afterglow Astronomy 2001", Woods Hole; 5-9 Nov, 2001
arxiv created 2002/03/20 · openalex publication_date 2002/10/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
In this paper we present a model for the short (<1 s) population of gamma-ray bursts. In this model heated neutron stars in a close binary system near its last stable orbit emit a large amount of neutrinos (~10 53 ergs). A fraction of these neutrinos will annihilate to form an e + e - pair plasma wind that will, in turn, expand and recombine to photons that make the gamma-ray burst. We study neutrino annihilation and show that a substantial fraction (~ ) of the energy deposited into e + e - pairs comes from interstar neutrinos, where each member of the neutrino pair originates from each neutron star. Thus, in addition to the annihilation of neutrinos blowing off of a single star, there is a new source of baryon-free plasma that is deposited between the stars. To model the e + e - pair plasma wind between stars, we do three-dimensional relativistic numerical hydrodynamic calculations. We find that the timescale for these bursts, deriving from the baryon-free plasma, is less than 1 s and that they will have a hot spectrum ~5 MeV. The energy in bursts is of the order of 10 52 ergs.