Development of the spectrum of gamma-ray burst pulses influenced by the intrinsic spectral evolution and the curvature effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the curvature effect and intrinsic spectral evolution influence the spectral and flux evolution of gamma-ray burst pulses, revealing a power-law relation and different behaviors in rising and decaying phases.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the curvature effect dominates the spectral evolution in the decaying phase and clarifies how intrinsic spectral changes affect pulse characteristics.

Findings

Flux and peak energy follow a power law with index about 3 in decay phase.

Spectrum in decay phase is mainly governed by curvature effect, with minor differences from intrinsic evolution.

Different intrinsic spectral evolutions produce distinct flux and peak energy behaviors in the rising phase.

Abstract

Spectral evolution of gamma-ray burst pulses assumed to arise from emission of fireballs is explored. It is found that, due to the curvature effect, the integrated flux and peak energy are well related by a power law in the decaying phase of pulses, where the index is about 3, being free of the intrinsic emission and the Lorentz factor. The spectrum of a pulse in its decaying phase differs slightly for different intrinsic spectral evolution patterns, indicating that it is dominated by the curvature effect. In the rising phase, the integrated flux keeps increasing whilst the peak energy remains unchanged when the intrinsic emission bears an unchanged spectrum. Within this phase, the flux decreases with the increasing of the peak energy for a hard-to-soft intrinsic spectrum, and for a soft-to-hard-to-soft intrinsic spectrum, the flux generally increases with the increasing of the peak energy. An intrinsic soft-to-hard-to-soft spectral evolution within a co-moving pulse would give rise to a pulse-like evolutionary curve for the peak energy.