On the release of binding energy and accretion power in core collapse-like environments

TL;DR

This paper explores how relaxing the traditional accretion energy dissipation assumptions can significantly enhance the efficiency of energy conversion in gamma-ray burst models, challenging standard paradigms.

Contribution

It proposes that removing the Shakura-Sunyaev prescription from GRB accretion models can increase energy conversion efficiency by over an order of magnitude.

Findings

Potential increase in energy conversion efficiency by an order of magnitude

Challenges to the standard SS73 accretion dissipation model

Implications for gamma-ray burst power mechanisms

Abstract

All accretion models of gamma-ray bursts share a common assumption: accretion power and gravitational binding energy is released and then dissipated locally, with the mass of its origin. This is equivalent to the Shakura-Sunyaev 1973 (SS73) prescription for the dissipation of accretion power and subsequent conversion into radiate output. Since their seminal paper, broadband observations of quasars and black hole X-ray binaries insist that the SS73 prescription cannot wholly describe their behavior. In particular, optically thick black hole accretion flows are almost universally accompanied by coronae whose relative power by far exceeds anything seen in studies of stellar chromospheric and coronal activity. In this note, we briefly discuss the possible repercussions of freeing accretion models of GRBs from the SS73 prescription. Our main conclusion is that the efficiency of converting gravitational binding energy into a GRB power can be increased by an order of magnitude or more.