Complicated variations of early optical afterglow of GRB 090726

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the complex early optical afterglow of GRB 090726, revealing a detailed light curve profile, exploring possible physical origins, and estimating the initial Lorentz factor, contributing to understanding GRB emission mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of the early optical afterglow of GRB 090726, including a complex light curve profile and estimates of the initial Lorentz factor, with implications for GRB models.

Findings

Optical afterglow peaked at ~17.5 mag around 500 s after burst.

The light curve showed a power-law rise, plateau, flare, and steepening decay.

Initial Lorentz factor estimated between 80-530 depending on environment.

Abstract

We report on a detection of an early rising phase of optical afterglow (OA) of a long GRB 090726. We resolve a complicated profile of the optical light curve. We also investigate the relation of the optical and X-ray emission of this event. We make use of the optical photometry of this OA obtained by the 0.5 m telescope of AI AS CR, supplemented by the data obtained by other observers, and the X-ray Swift/XRT data. The optical emission peaked at ~ 17.5 mag (R) at t-T0 ~ 500 s. We find a complex profile of the light curve during the early phase of this OA: an approximately power-law rise, a rapid transition to a plateau, a weak flare superimposed on the center of this plateau, and a slowly steepening early decline followed by a power-law decay. We discuss several possibilities to explain the short flare on the flat top of the optical light curve at t-T0 ~ 500 s; activity of the central engine is favored although reverse shock cannot be ruled out. We show that power-law outflow with Theta_obs/Theta_c > 2.5 is the best case for OA of GRB 090726. The initial Lorentz factor is Gamma_0 ~ 230-530 in case of propagation of the blast wave in a homogeneous medium, while propagation of this wave in a wind environment gives Gamma_0 ~ 80-300. The value of Gamma_0 in GRB 090726 thus falls into the lower half of the range observed in GRBs and it may even lie on the lower end. We also show that both the optical and X-ray emission decayed simultaneously and that the spectral profile from X-ray to the optical band did not vary. This OA belongs to the least luminous ones in the phase of its power-law decay corresponding to that observed for the ensemble of OAs of long GRBs.