2004/03/31 by Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, E. Ramírez-Ruiz
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07770.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 349 (2004) L38 · 6 pages, 4 figures; final version
openalex publication_date 2004/04/01 · arxiv created 2004/05/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The recent reports of temporal and spectral peculiarities in the early stages of some afterglows suggest that we may be wrong in postulating a central engine that becomes dormant after the burst itself. A continually decreasing post-burst relativistic outflow, such as put out by a decaying magnetar, may continue to be emitted for periods of days or longer, and we argue that it can be efficiently reprocessed by the ambient soft photon field radiation. Photons produced either by the post-explosion expansion of the progenitor stellar envelope or by a binary companion provide ample targets for the relativistic outflow to interact and produce high-energy γ-rays. The resultant signal may yield luminosities high enough to be detected with the recently launched INTEGRAL and the GLAST experiment now under construction. Its detection will surely offer important clues for identifying the nature of the progenitor and possibly constraining whether some route other than single-star evolution is involved in producing a rapidly rotating helium core which in turn, at collapse, triggers a burst.