GRB Prompt Emission with Anisotropic Electron Distribution

TL;DR

This paper models GRB prompt emission spectra considering anisotropic electron distributions caused by magnetic reconnection, explaining suppressed electron cooling and matching observed spectra with specific jet parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical calculation of synchrotron spectra with anisotropic electrons, incorporating cooling effects, to better explain GRB prompt emission.

Findings

Small pitch angles prevent electron cooling via synchrotron radiation.

Reproducing typical GRB spectra requires bulk Lorentz factor ~1000 and electron minimum Lorentz factor ~10^4.

A Poynting flux larger than 10^{50} erg/s is necessary in the model.

Abstract

The typical spectrum of the prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) indicates that the electron cooling is suppressed in spite of the strong magnetic field in the standard synchrotron model. Recent Particle-in-Cell simulations show that the particle acceleration by magnetic reconnection in a magnetically dominated plasma can lead to small pitch angles especially in low-energy region. Such a small pitch angle prevents electrons from cooling via synchrotron radiation. In this paper, taking into account the effects of the synchrotron cooling and the adiabatic cooling, we numerically calculate the synchrotron spectra with anisotropic electron distributions. If we require a Poynting flux larger than $10^{50}~\mbox{erg}~\mbox{s}^{-1}$ as the model is motivated by magnetic reconnection, the bulk Lorentz factor of $\sim 1000$ and the electron minimum Lorentz factor of $\gamma_{\rm min}\sim 10^4$ are required to reproduce the typical GRB spectrum.