Clues from the prompt emission of GRB 080319B
Y. C. Zou, T. Piran, R. Sari

TL;DR
The paper analyzes the optical and gamma-ray spectra of GRB 080319B, concluding that the optical and gamma-ray emissions originated from different regions, with gamma-rays from internal shocks and optical from external shocks, challenging initial SSC assumptions.
Contribution
It provides constraints on emission processes in GRB 080319B, showing that optical and gamma-ray emissions are produced in separate regions, and rules out SSC as the source of prompt gamma-rays.
Findings
Optical emission is constrained by self absorption, indicating a large emission radius.
SSC cannot account for the prompt gamma-ray production.
Optical and gamma-ray emissions originate from different physical regions.
Abstract
The extremely bright optical flash that accompanied GRB 080319B suggested, at first glance, that the prompt -rays in this burst were produced by Synchrotron self Compton (SSC). We analyze here the observed optical and spectrum. We find that the very strong optical emission poses, due to self absorption, very strong constraints on the emission processes and put the origin of the optical emission at a very large radius, almost inconsistent with internal shock. Alternatively it requires a very large random Lorentz factor for the electrons. We find that SSC could not have produced the prompt -rays. We also show that the optical emission and the rays could not have been produced by synchrotron emission from two populations of electron within the same emitting region. Thus we must conclude that the optical and the -rays were produced in different…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
