Relativistic fireballs - Energy conversion and time-scales.
Abstract
The expansion energy of a relativistic fireball can be reconverted into radiation when it interacts with an external medium. For expansion with Lorentz factors greater than or approximately equal to 1000 into a typical galactic environment, the corresponding time-scale in the frame of the observer is of the order of seconds. This mechanism would operate in any cosmological scenario of gamma-ray bursts involving initial energies of order a percent of a stellar rest mass, and implies photon energies and time-scales compatible with those observed in gamma-ray bursts.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- September 1992
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/258.1.41P
- Bibcode:
- 1992MNRAS.258P..41R
- Keywords:
-
- Compton Effect;
- Gamma Ray Bursts;
- Neutron Stars;
- Relativity;
- Stellar Envelopes;
- Baryons;
- Fireballs;
- Interstellar Matter;
- Kinetic Energy;
- Astrophysics