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Bright X-ray flares are routinely detected by the Swift satellite during the early afterglow of gamma-ray bursts, when the explosion ejecta drives a blast wave into the external medium. We suggest that the flares are produced as the reverse shock propagates into the tail of the ejecta. The ejecta is expected to contain a few dense shells formed at an earlier stage of the explosion. We show an example of how such dense shells form and describe how the reverse shock interacts with them. A new reflected shock is generated in this interaction, which produces a short-lived X-ray flare. The model provides a natural explanation for the main observed features of the X-ray flares --- the fast rise, the steep power-law decline, and the characteristic peak duration \Delta t /t= (0.1-0.3)., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We reanalyze the prompt emission of two of the brightest Fermi GRBs (080916C and 090926A) with a new model composed of 3 components: (i) a thermal-like component--approximated with a black body (BB)--interpreted as the jet photosphere emission of a magnetized relativistic outflow, (ii) a non-thermal component--approximated with a Band function--interpreted as synchrotron radiation in an optically thin region above the photosphere either from internal shocks or magnetic field dissipation, and (iii) an extra power law (PL) extending from low to high energies likely of inverse Compton origin, even though it remains challenging. Through fine-time spectroscopy down to the 100 ms time scale, we follow the smooth evolution of the various components. From this analysis the Band function is globally the most intense component, although the additional PL can overpower the others in sharp time structures. The Band function and the BB component are the most intense at early times and globally fade across the burst duration. The additional PL is the most intense component at late time and may be correlated with the extended high-energy emission observed thousands of seconds after the burst with the Fermi/Large Area Telescope (LAT). Unexpectedly, this analysis also shows that the additional PL may be present from the very beginning of the burst. We investigate the effect of the three components on the new time-resolved luminosity-hardness relation in both the observer and rest frames and show that a strong correlation exists between the flux of the non-thermal component and its E$_{peak}$ only when the three components are fitted simultaneously to the data (i.e., F$_i^{NT}$-E$_{peak,i}^{NT}$ relation). In addition, this result points toward a universal relation between those two quantities for all GRBs when transposed to the central engine rest frame (i.e., L$_i^{NT}$-E$_{peak,i}^{rest,NT}$ relation)., Comment: 24 pages of article (18 figures and 1 table) + 31 pages of Appendix (4 figures + 6 tables), Submitted to ApJ (January 28, 2015)

We test a model recently proposed for the persistent hard X-ray emission from magnetars. In the model, hard X-rays are produced by a decelerating electron-positron flow in the closed magnetosphere. The flow decelerates as it radiates its energy away via resonant scattering of soft X-rays, then it reaches the top of the magnetic loop and annihilates there. We test the model against observations of three magnetars: 4U 0142+61, 1RXS J1708-4009, and 1E 1841-045. We find that the model successfully fits the observed phase-resolved spectra. We derive constraints on the angle between the rotational and magnetic axes of the neutron star, the object inclination to the line of sight, and the size of the active twisted region filled with the plasma flow. Using the fit of the hard X-ray component of the magnetar spectrum, we revisit the remaining soft X-ray component. We find that it can be explained by a modified two-temperature blackbody model. The hotter blackbody is consistent with a hot spot covering 1-10% of the neutron star surface. Such a hot spot is expected at the base of the magnetospheric e+- outflow, as some particles created in the e+- discharge flow back and bombard the stellar surface., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to ApJL

The early X-ray afterglow of gamma-ray bursts revealed by Swift carried many surprises. We focus in this paper on the plateau phase whose origin remains highly debated. We confront several newly discovered correlations between prompt and afterglow quantities (isotropic emitted energy in gamma-rays, luminosity and duration of the plateau) to several models proposed for the origin of plateaus in order to check if they can account for these observed correlations. We first show that the scenario of plateau formation by energy injection into the forward shock leads to an efficiency crisis for the prompt phase and therefore study two possible alternatives: the first one still takes place within the framework of the standard forward shock model but allows for a variation of the microphysics parameters to reduce the radiative efficiency at early times; in the second scenario the early afterglow results from a long-lived reverse shock. Its shape then depends on the distribution of energy as a function of Lorentz factor in the ejecta. In both cases, we first present simple analytical estimates of the plateau luminosity and duration and then compute detailed light curves. In the two considered scenarios we find that plateaus following the observed correlations can be obtained under the condition that specific additional ingredients are included. In the forward shock scenario, the preferred model supposes a wind external medium and a microphysics parameter epsilon_e that first varies as n^{-\nu} (n being the external density), with \nu~1 to get a flat plateau, before staying constant below a critical density n_0. To produce a plateau in the reverse shock scenario the ejecta must contain a tail of low Lorentz factor with a peak of energy deposition at \Gamma >~ 10., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS

We study the observed correlations between the duration and luminosity of the early afterglow plateau and the isotropic gamma-ray energy release during the prompt phase. We discuss these correlations in the context of two scenarios for the origin of the plateaus. In the first one the afterglow is made by the forward shock and the plateau results from variations of the microphysics parameters while in the second one the early afterglow is made by a long-lived reverse shock propagating in a low Lorentz factor tail of the ejecta., Comment: 7th Huntsville Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium, GRB 2013: paper 29 in eConf Proceedings C1304143

The peak time of optical afterglow may be used as a proxy to constrain the Lorentz factor Gamma of the gamma-ray burst (GRB) ejecta. We revisit this method by including bursts with optical observations that started when the afterglow flux was already decaying; these bursts can provide useful lower limits on Gamma. Combining all analyzed bursts in our sample, we find that the previously reported correlation between Gamma and the burst luminosity L_gamma does not hold. However, the data clearly shows a lower bound Gamma_min which increases with L_gamma. We suggest an explanation for this feature: explosions with large jet luminosities and Gamma < Gamma_min suffer strong adiabatic cooling before their radiation is released at the photosphere; they produce weak bursts, barely detectable with present instruments. To test this explanation we examine the effect of adiabatic cooling on the GRB location in the L_gamma - Gamma plane using a Monte Carlo simulation of the GRB population. Our results predict detectable on-axis "orphan" afterglows. We also derive upper limits on the density of the ambient medium that decelerates the explosion ejecta. We find that the density in many cases is smaller than expected for stellar winds from normal Wolf-Rayet progenitors. The burst progenitors may be peculiar massive stars with weaker winds or there might exist a mechanism that reduces the stellar wind a few years before the explosion., Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

GRB spectra appear non-thermal, but recent observations of a few bursts with Fermi GBM have confirmed previous indications from BATSE of the presence of an underlying thermal component. Photospheric emission is indeed expected when the relativistic outflow emerging from the central engine becomes transparent to its own radiation, with a quasi-blackbody spectrum in absence of additional sub-photospheric dissipation. However, its intensity strongly depends on the acceleration mechanism - thermal or magnetic - of the flow. We aim to compute the thermal and non-thermal emissions produced by an outflow with a variable Lorentz factor, where the power injected at the origin is partially thermal (fraction epsilon_th) and partially magnetic (fraction 1-epsilon_th). The thermal emission is produced at the photosphere, and the non-thermal emission in the optically thin regime. Apart from the value of epsilon_th, we want to test how the other model parameters affect the observed ratio of the thermal to non-thermal emission. If the non-thermal emission is made by internal shocks, we self-consistently obtained the light curves and spectra of the thermal and non-thermal components for any distribution of the Lorentz factor in the flow. If the non-thermal emission results from magnetic reconnection we were unable to produce a light curve and could only compare the respective non-thermal and thermal spectra. In the different considered cases, we varied the model parameters to see when the thermal component in the light curve and/or spectrum is likely to show up or, on the contrary, to be hidden. We finally compared our results to the proposed evidence for the presence of a thermal component in GRB spectra. Focussing on GRB 090902B and GRB 10072B, we showed how these observations can be used to constrain the nature and acceleration mechanism of GRB outflows., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

The short GRB 120323A had the highest flux ever detected with the Fermi/GBM. Here we study its remarkable spectral properties and their evolution using two spectral models: (i) a single emission component scenario, where the spectrum is modeled by the empirical Band function, and (ii) a two component scenario, where thermal (Planck-like) emission is observed simultaneously with a non-thermal component (a Band function). We find that the latter model fits the integrated burst spectrum significantly better than the former, and that their respective spectral parameters are dramatically different: when fit with a Band function only, the Epeak of the event is unusually soft for a short GRB, while adding a thermal component leads to more typical short GRB values. Our time-resolved spectral analysis produces similar results. We argue here that the two-component model is the preferred interpretation for GRB 120323A, based on: (i) the values and evolution of the Band function parameters of the two component scenario, which are more typical for a short GRB, and (ii) the appearance in the data of a significant hardness-intensity correlation, commonly found in GRBs, when we employee two-component model fits; the correlation is non-existent in the Band-only fits. GRB 110721A, a long burst with an intense photospheric emission, exhibits the exact same behavior. We conclude that GRB 120323A has a strong photospheric emission contribution, first time observed in a short GRB. Magnetic dissipation models are difficult to reconcile with these results, which instead favor photospheric thermal emission and fast cooling synchrotron radiation from internal shocks. Finally, we derive a possibly universal hardness-luminosity relation in the source frame using a larger set of GRBs L,i=(1.59+/-0.84).10^50 (Epeak,i)^(1.33+/-0.07) erg/s), which could be used as a possible redshift estimator for cosmology., Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures, Accepted by ApJ (April, 7th 2013)

The Swift-XRT observations of the early X-ray afterglow of GRBs show that it usually begins with a steep decay phase. A possible origin of this early steep decay is the high latitude emission that subsists when the on-axis emission of the last dissipating regions in the relativistic outflow has been switched-off. We wish to establish which of various models of the prompt emission are compatible with this interpretation. We successively consider internal shocks, photospheric emission, and magnetic reconnection and obtain the typical decay timescale at the end of the prompt phase in each case. Only internal shocks naturally predict a decay timescale comparable to the burst duration, as required to explain XRT observations in terms of high latitude emission. The decay timescale of the high latitude emission is much too short in photospheric models and the observed decay must then correspond to an effective and generic behavior of the central engine. Reconnection models require some ad hoc assumptions to agree with the data, which will have to be validated when a better description of the reconnection process becomes available., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

GRB 080503, detected by Swift, belongs to the class of bursts whose prompt phase consists of an initial short spike followed by a longer soft tail. It did not show any transition to a regular afterglow at the end of the prompt emission but exhibited a surprising rebrightening after one day. We aim to explain this rebrightening with two different scenarios - refreshed shocks or a density clump in the circumburst medium - and two models for the origin of the afterglow, the standard one where it comes from the forward shock, and an alternative one where it results from a long-lived reverse shock. We computed afterglow light curves either using a single-zone approximation for the shocked region or a detailed multizone method that more accurately accounts for the compression of the material. We find that in several of the considered cases the detailed model must be used to obtain a reliable description of the shock dynamics. The density clump scenario is not favored. We confirm previous results that the presence of the clump has little effect on the forward shock emission, except if the microphysics parameters evolve when the shock enters the clump. Moreover, we find that the rebrightening from the reverse shock is also too weak when it is calculated with the multi-zone method. On the other hand, in the refreshed-shock scenario both the forward and reverse shock models provide satisfactory fits of the data under some additional conditions on the distribution of the Lorentz factor in the ejecta and the beaming angle of the relativistic outflow., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

Recent detections of GeV photons in a few GRBs by Fermi-LAT have led to strong constraints on the bulk Lorentz factor in GRB outflows. To avoid a large gamma-gamma optical depth, minimum values of the Lorentz factor have been estimated to be as high as 800-1200 in some bursts. Here we present a detailed calculation of the gamma-gamma optical depth taking into account both the geometry and the dynamics of the jet. In the framework of the internal shock model, we compute lightcurves in different energy bands and the corresponding spectrum and we show how the limits on the Lorentz factor can be significantly lowered compared to previous estimates. Our detailed model of the propagation of high energy photons in GRB outflows is also appropriate to study many other consequences of gamma-gamma annihilation in GRBs: (i) the gamma-gamma cutoff transition in a time-integrated spectrum is expected to be closer to a power-law steepening of the spectrum than to a sharp exponential decay; (ii) the temporal evolution of the gamma-gamma opacity during a burst favors a delay between the MeV and GeV light curves; (iii) for complex GRBs, the gamma-gamma opacity suppresses the shortest time-scale features in high energy light curves (above 100 MeV). Finally we also consider GRB scenarii where MeV and GeV photons are not produced at the same location, showing that the gamma-gamma opacity could be further lowered, reducing even more the constraint on the minimum Lorentz factor., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 2011 Fermi Symposium proceedings - eConf C110509

A few long gamma-ray bursts such as GRB 050421 show no afterglow emission beyond the usual initial steep decay phase. It has been suggested that these events correspond to "naked" bursts that occur in a very low density environment. We reconsider this possibility in the context of various scenarios for the origin of the afterglow. In the standard model where the afterglow results from the forward shock as well as in the alternative model where the afterglow comes from the reverse shock, we aim to obtain constraints on the density of the environment, the microphysics parameters, or the Lorentz factor of the ejecta, which are imposed by the absence of a detected afterglow. For the two models we compute the afterglow evolution for different values of the external density (uniform or wind medium) and various burst parameters. We then compare our results to the Swift data of GRB 050421, which is the best example of a long burst without afterglow. In the standard model we show that consistency with the data imposes that the external density does not exceed 1E-5 cm-3 or that the microphysics parameters are very small with epsilon_e <~ 1E-2 and epsilon_B <~ 1E-4. If the afterglow is caused by the reverse shock, we find that its contribution can be strongly reduced if the central source has mainly emitted fast-moving material (with less than 10 - 30 % of the kinetic energy at Gamma<100 and was located in a dense environment. The two considered scenarios therefore lead to opposite constraints on the circumburst medium. The high-density environment, favored by the reverse shock model, better corresponds to what is expected if the burst progenitor was a massive star., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, to appear in A&A

Recent detections of GeV photons in a few GRBs by Fermi-LAT imply huge bulk Lorentz factors to avoid a large gamma gamma optical depth at high energy. Estimates can be as high as Gamma ~ 1000 in the most extreme cases. This puts severe constraints on models of the central engine and the jet acceleration in GRBs. These estimates are however obtained from a simplified single zone model. We present here a more realistic calculation which takes into account the time, space and direction dependent photon field existing in an outflow with several relativistically moving emitting zones. The formalism is general and can be applied to many models of the prompt GRB emission. We present results obtained for a numerical implementation in the framework of the internal shock model. We show that (i) the minimum Lorentz factor Gamma_min in bright LAT GRBs is reduced by a factor ~ 2-3 compared to previous estimates if the GeV and MeV emission are produced in the same region, and by an additional factor ~ 2-8 if the GeV emission is produced at larger radii. We provide an improved approximate formula for Gamma_min which is in good agreement with our numerical results and can be directly applied to LAT GRB data; (ii) a delayed GeV onset can be due to the time evolution of the opacity. As an illustration of these two first results, we present a synthetic GRB that reproduces most features of GRB 080916C with a mean Lorentz factor of ~ 340, an optically thin regime for gamma gamma opacity at 3GeV in bin 'b', a variability timescale of 0.5s in the MeV lightcurve and a delayed onset of ~ 5s of the GeV emission; (iii) the gamma gamma opacity can smooth the short timescale variability in the GeV lightcurve. This last result implies that the observed variability at high energy is not necessarily a good test to distinguish between an internal and an external origin for the GeV emission in GRBs. [abridged], Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures

GRB 041219A is one of the longest and brightest gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) ever observed. It was discovered by the INTEGRAL satellite, and thanks to a precursor happening about 300 s before the bulk of the burst, ground based telescopes were able to catch the rarely-observed prompt emission in the optical and in the near infrared bands. Here we present the detailed analysis of its prompt gamma-ray emission, as observed with IBIS on board INTEGRAL, and of the available X-ray afterglow data collected by XRT on board Swift. We then present the late-time multi-band near infrared imaging data, collected at the TNG, and the CFHT, that allowed us to identify the host galaxy of the GRB as an under-luminous, irregular galaxy of about 5x10^9 M_Sun at best fit redshift of z=0.31 -0.26 +0.54. We model the broad-band prompt optical to gamma-ray emission of GRB 041219A within the internal shock model. We were able to reproduce the spectra and light curve invoking the synchrotron emission of relativistic electrons accelerated by a series of propagating shock waves inside a relativistic outflow. On the other hand, it is less easy to simultaneously reproduce the temporal and spectral properties of the infrared data., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, Figure 5 in reduced quality

The huge optical brightness of GRB 080319B (the "Naked Eye Burst) makes this event really challenging for models of the prompt GRB emission. In the framework of the internal shock model, we investigate a scenario where the dominant radiative process is synchrotron emission and the high optical flux is due to the dynamical properties of the relativistic outflow: if the initial Lorentz factor distribution in the jet is highly variable, many internal shocks will form within the outflow at various radii. The most violent shocks will produce the main gamma-ray component while the less violent ones will contribute at lower energy, including the optical range., Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, proceedings of the conference "Deciphering the Ancient Universe with Gamma-Ray Bursts", Kyoto, Japan. Editors: N. Kawai, S. Nagataki

Recent detections of GeV photons in a few GRBs by Fermi-LAT have led to strong constraints on the bulk Lorentz factor in GRB outflows. To avoid a large gamma gamma optical depth, minimum values of the Lorentz factor are estimated to be as high as 800-1200 in some bursts. Here we present a detailed calculation of the gamma gamma optical depth taking into account both the geometry and the dynamics of the jet. In the framework of the internal shock model, we compute lightcurves in different energy bands and the corresponding spectrum and we show how the limits on the Lorentz factor can be significantly lowered compared to previous estimates., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of the Gamma Ray Bursts 2010 Conference, Annapolis, USA. Editors: McEnery, Racusin, Gehrels