Generation of High-Energy Photons at Ultra-Relativistic Shock Breakout in Supernovae

TL;DR

This paper models non-thermal high-energy photon emission during ultra-relativistic shock breakout in supernovae, using relativistic photon transfer calculations to predict spectral features and compare with gamma-ray burst observations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of photon transfer at relativistic shock breakouts, revealing spectral shapes and energy estimates that align with some gamma-ray burst features.

Findings

Spectral shape can be double or single peaked depending on shock temperature.

Higher energy components can match some gamma-ray burst observations.

Lower energy spectrum and duration are not fully reproduced by the model.

Abstract

We present theoretical expectations for non-thermal emission due to the bulk Comptonization at the ultra-relativistic shock breakout. We calculate the transfer of photons emitted from the shocked matter with a Monte Carlo code fully taking into account special relativity. As a hydrodynamical model, we use a self-similar solution of Nakayama & Shigeyama (2005). Our calculations reveal that the spectral shape exhibits a double peak or a single peak depending on the shock temperature at the shock breakout. If it is significantly smaller than the rest energy of an electron, the spectrum has a double peak. We also display a few example of light curves, and estimate the total radiation energy. In comparison with observations of gamma-ray bursts, a part of the higher energy component in the spectra and the total energy can be reproduced by some parameter sets. Meanwhile, the lower energy counterpart in the Band function is not reproduced by our results and the duration time seems too short to represent the entire event of a gamma-ray burst. Therefore the subsequent phase will constitute the lower energy part in the spectrum.