Dynamics and Afterglow Light Curves of GRB Blast Waves with a Long-lived Reverse Shock

TL;DR

This paper models the dynamics and afterglow light curves of gamma-ray burst (GRB) blast waves with a long-lived reverse shock, revealing complex features in the reverse shock emission that could explain observed afterglow diversity.

Contribution

It introduces an accurate mechanical model for long-lived reverse shocks in GRB blast waves, incorporating detailed shell evolution and spectral calculations, advancing understanding of afterglow features.

Findings

Reverse shock light curves show rich features like bumps and plateaus.

Forward shock light curves are insensitive to ejecta stratification.

Long-lived reverse shocks produce observable signatures in GRB afterglows.

Abstract

We perform a detailed study on the dynamics of a relativistic blast wave with the presence of a long-lived reverse shock (RS). Although a short-lived RS has been widely considered, the RS is believed to be long-lived as a consequence of a stratification expected on the ejecta Lorentz factors. The existence of a long-lived RS makes the forward shock (FS) dynamics to deviate from a self-similar Blandford-McKee solution. Employing the "mechanical model" that correctly incorporates the energy conservation, we present an accurate solution for both the FS and RS dynamics. We conduct a sophisticated calculation of the afterglow emission. Adopting a Lagrangian description of the blast wave, we keep track of an adiabatic evolution of numerous shells between the FS and RS. An evolution of the electron spectrum is also followed individually for every shell. We then find the FS and RS light curves by integrating over the entire FS and RS shocked regions, respectively. In particular, we make use of an analytic expression for observed spectral flux, which we derive here in terms of an observed frequency and observer time. Exploring a total of 20 different ejecta stratifications, we explain in detail how a stratified ejecta affects its blast wave dynamics and afterglow light curves. We show that, while the FS light curves are not sensitive to the ejecta stratifications, the RS light curves exhibit much richer features, including steep declines, plateaus, bumps, re-brightenings, and a variety of temporal decay indices. These distinctive RS features may be observable if the RS has higher values of the micophysics parameters than the FS. We discuss possible applications of our results in understanding the GRB afterglow data.