Modeling kilonova afterglows: Effects of the thermal electron population and interaction with GRB outflows

TL;DR

This paper models kilonova afterglows considering thermal and non-thermal electron populations, revealing how their interplay and environmental factors influence observable light curves, aiding interpretation of neutron star merger events.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-analytic model incorporating dual electron populations and environmental effects to better understand kilonova afterglow light curves.

Findings

Thermal electrons dominate early emission.

High-density environments produce early peaks.

Low-density environments favor non-thermal emission.

Abstract

Given an increasing number of gamma-ray bursts accompanied by potential kilonovae there is a growing importance to advance modelling of kilonova afterglows. In this work, we investigate how the presence of two electron populations that follow a Maxwellian (thermal) and a power-law (non-thermal) distributions affect kilonova afterglow light curves. We employ semi-analytic afterglow model, $\texttt{PyBlastAfterglow}$. We consider kilonova ejecta profiles from ab-initio numerical relativity binary neutron star merger simulations, targeted to GW170817. We do not perform model selection. We find that the emission from thermal electrons dominates at early times. If the interstellar medium density is high (${\simeq}0.1\,\ccm$) it adds an early time peak to the light curve. As ejecta decelerates the spectral and temporal indexes change in a characteristic way that, if observed, can be used to reconstruct the ejecta velocity distribution. For the low interstellar medium density, inferred for GRB 170817A, the emission from the non-thermal electron population generally dominates. We also assess how kilonova afterglow light curves change if the interstellar medium has been partially removed and pre-accelerated by laterally expanding gamma-ray burst ejecta. We find that the main effect is the emission suppression at early time ${\lesssim}10^{3}\,$days, and at its maximum it reaches ${\sim}40\%$ when the fast tail of the kilonova ejecta moves subsonically through the wake of laterally spreading gamma-ray burst ejecta. The subsequent rebrightening, when these ejecta break through and shocks form, is very mild (${\lesssim}10\%$), and may not be observable.