A Comprehensive Analysis of Text-Book-Version Afterglow Light curves of Gamma-Ray Bursts and Implication for Universal Radiation Physics of Baryonic Jets

TL;DR

This study analyzes 30 GRB afterglow light curves to derive jet properties, revealing universal radiation energy and supporting the baryonic fireball model through statistical distributions and correlations.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive statistical analysis of textbook-style GRB afterglow light curves, uncovering universal properties and relations among jet and radiation parameters.

Findings

Distributions of Lorentz factors, deceleration radii, and magnetic fields are log-normal.

A tight relation among deceleration radius, magnetic field, and magnetization parameter.

Evidence supporting a universal GRB radiation energy and baryonic fireball model.

Abstract

The standard external shock model in the thin-shell scenario predicts an onset bump in the early optical afterglow light curves of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We collect such a textbook-version light curve sample of $30$ GRBs, and derive the jet properties from our joint fit to their X-ray and optical afterglow light curves. It is found that the distributions of the isotropic initial Lorentz factors ($\Gamma_0$), the deceleration radii ($R_{\rm dec}$), and the magnetic field strength ($B_0$) are log-normal, but the distributions of the isotropic kinetic energy ($E_{\rm k, iso}$), medium density ($n_{0}$), and the magnetization parameter ($\sigma_{B}\equiv\epsilon_B/\epsilon_e$) are tentatively bimodal. A tight $R_{\rm dec}\mbox{-}B_{0}\mbox{-}\sigma_{B}$ relation is found. It infers a universal $\epsilon_e E_{\rm k,iso}$ among bursts, plausibly supporting the previous argument of a universal GRB radiation energy among GRBs. A jet break is required for modeling the light curves of $26$ GRBs. The distributions of the jet opening angles and the jet-corrected kinetic energies log-normally center at $\log \theta_{\rm j,c}/{\rm rad}=-1.51$ (standard deviation $\sigma=0.27$) and $\log (E_{\rm k, j,c}/{\rm erg})=51.78$ ($\sigma=0.54$), respectively. Those GRBs ($19$ GRBs), whose prompt gamma-ray emission is well estimated with broad energy-band observations, satisfy the previously discovered $L_{\rm \gamma, p, iso}-E_{\rm p,z}-\Gamma_{0}$ relation, and their gamma-ray radiation efficiencies log-normally distribute in the range from $0.04\%$ to $10\%$ with a central value of $0.42\%$. Such a low efficiency favors the baryonic fireball model, and the distribution of their baryon mass loading in the GRB ejecta log-normally centers at $\log (M_{\rm fb,c}/M_{\rm sun})=-5$ ($\sigma=0.75$).