A leptonic-hadronic model for the afterglow of gamma-ray burst 090510

TL;DR

This paper presents a combined leptonic-hadronic model for the afterglow of GRB 090510, explaining multiwavelength emissions with proton- and electron-synchrotron radiation, and predicts detectable TeV gamma rays as evidence of hadronic processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel leptonic-hadronic model for GRB afterglows, highlighting proton-synchrotron emission's role at high energies and the potential for TeV gamma-ray detection.

Findings

High energy emission dominated by proton-synchrotron radiation.

Electron-synchrotron radiation explains X-ray and UV emissions.

TeV gamma rays can escape early, indicating hadronic processes.

Abstract

We model multiwavelength afterglow data from the short Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) 090510 using a combined leptonic-hadronic model of synchrotron radiation from an adiabatic blast wave. High energy, >100 MeV, emission in our model is dominated by proton-synchrotron radiation, while electron-synchrotron radiation dominates in the X ray and ultraviolet wavelengths. The collimation-corrected GRB energy, depending on the jet-break time, in this model could be as low as 3e51 erg but two orders of magnitude larger than the gamma-ray energy. We also calculated the opacities for electron-positron pair production by gamma rays and found that TeV gamma rays from proton-synchrotron radiation can escape the blast wave at early time, and their detection can provide evidence of a hadronic emission component dominating at high energies.