Neutron Star Mergers and Gamma-Ray Bursts: Stripping Model

TL;DR

This paper reviews the stripping model for short gamma-ray bursts, explaining how it accounts for observed properties of GRB170817A following neutron star mergers, especially in light of gravitational wave detections.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the stripping model naturally explains peculiar features of GRB170817A, linking gravitational wave data with gamma-ray burst observations.

Findings

The stripping model accounts for the 1.7 s delay between GW and gamma-ray signals.

It explains the total isotropic energy of GRB170817A.

It describes the properties of the kilonova components.

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the current state of the stripping model for short gamma-ray bursts. After the historical joint detection of the gravitational wave event GW170817 and the accompanying gamma-ray burst GRB170817A, the relation between short gamma-ray bursts and neutron star mergers has been reliably confirmed. We show that many properties of GRB170817A, which turned out to be peculiar in comparison with other short gamma-ray bursts, are naturally explained in the context of the stripping model, specifically, the time (1.7 s) between the peak of the gravitational wave signal and the detection of the gamma-ray burst, its total isotropic energy, and the parameters of the red and blue components of the accompanying kilonova.