Off-Axis Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglow Modeling Based On A Two-Dimensional Axisymmetric Hydrodynamics Simulation

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution two-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamics simulations to model off-axis gamma-ray burst afterglows, revealing delayed jet breaks and implications for observational detection and energy estimates.

Contribution

It provides detailed off-axis light curves from simulations, improving understanding of afterglow evolution and observational signatures compared to analytical models.

Findings

Observable jet breaks can be delayed by weeks for off-axis observers.

Jet breaks may remain hidden in typical Swift X-ray data.

Only a small fraction of local Type Ibc supernovae can produce orphan afterglows.

Abstract

Starting as highly relativistic collimated jets, gamma-ray burst outflows gradually decelerate and become non-relativistic spherical blast waves. Although detailed analytical solutions describing the afterglow emission received by an on-axis observer during both the early and late phases of the outflow evolution exist, a calculation of the received flux during the intermediate phase and for an off-axis observer requires either a more simplified analytical model or direct numerical simulations of the outflow dynamics. In this paper we present light curves for off-axis observers covering the long-term evolution of the blast wave calculated from a high resolution two-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamics simulation using a synchrotron radiation model. We compare our results to earlier analytical work and calculate the consequence of the observer angle with respect to the jet axis both for the detection of orphan afterglows and for jet break fits to the observational data. We find that observable jet breaks can be delayed for up to several weeks for off-axis observers, potentially leading to overestimation of the beaming corrected total energy. When using our off-axis light curves to create synthetic Swift X-ray data, we find that jet breaks are likely to remain hidden in the data. We also confirm earlier results in the literature finding that only a very small number of local Type Ibc supernovae can harbor an orphan afterglow.