High-energy afterglow emission from gamma-ray bursts |
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| Authors: | Yi-Zhong Fan † Tsvi Piran † Ramesh Narayan † Da-Ming Wei † |
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| Institution: | The Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel;Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Science, Nanjing 210008, China;Neils Bohr International Academy, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark;Institute for Theory and Computation, Centre for Astrophysics, Harvard University, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA |
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| Abstract: | We calculate the very high-energy (sub-GeV to TeV) inverse Compton emission of GRB afterglows. We argue that this emission provides a powerful test of the currently accepted afterglow model. We focus on two processes: synchrotron self-Compton emission within the afterglow blast wave, and external inverse Compton emission which occurs when flare photons (produced by an internal process) pass through the blast wave. We show that if our current interpretations of the Swift X-ray telescope (XRT) data are correct, there should be a canonical high-energy afterglow emission light curve. Our predictions can be tested with high-energy observatories such as GLAST , Whipple, HESS and MAGIC. Under favourable conditions we expect afterglow detections in all these detectors. |
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| Keywords: | radiation mechanisms: non-thermal ISM: jets and outflows gamma rays: bursts |
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