2008/09/02 by Brian J. Morsony, Jared C. Workman, Davide Lazzati +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Computational physics #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Jitter #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Magnetic field #Optics #Physics #Radiation #Spectral line #Synchrotron #Synchrotron radiation #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13856.x
11 pages, 7 postscript figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2008/09/02 · openalex publication_date 2009/01/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider radiation emitted by the jitter mechanism in a Blandford–McKee self-similar blastwave. We assume the magnetic field configuration throughout the whole blastwave meets the condition for the emission of jitter radiation and we compute the ensuing images, light curves and spectra. The calculations are performed for both a uniform and a wind environment. We compare our jitter results to synchrotron results. We show that jitter radiation produces slightly different spectra than synchrotron, in particular between the self-absorption and the peak frequency, where the jitter spectrum is flat, while the synchrotron spectrum grows as ν1/3. The spectral difference is reflected in the early decay slope of the light curves. We conclude that jitter and synchrotron afterglows can be distinguished from each other with good quality observations. However, it is unlikely that the difference can explain the peculiar behaviour of several recent observations, such as flat X-ray slopes and uncorrelated optical and X-ray behaviour.