No Arabic abstract
We propose a novel model to produce ultrahigh-energy cosmic-rays (UHECRs) in gamma-ray burst jets. After the prompt gamma-ray emission, hydrodynamical turbulence is excited in the GRB jets at or before the afterglow phase. The mildly relativistic turbulence stochastically accelerates protons. The acceleration rate is much slower than the usual first-order shock acceleration rate, but in this case it can be energy-independent. The resultant UHECR spectrum is so hard that the bulk energy is concentrated in the highest energy range, resulting in a moderate requirement for the typical cosmic ray luminosity of $sim 10^{53.5}~mbox{erg}~mbox{s}^{-1}$. In this model, the secondary gamma-ray and neutrino emissions initiated by photopion production are significantly suppressed. Although the UHECR spectrum at injection shows a curved feature, this does not conflict with the observed UHECR spectral shape. The cosmogenic neutrino spectrum in the $10^{17}$--$10^{18}$ eV range becomes distinctively hard in this model, which may be verified by future observations.
Blazars are potential candidates of cosmic-ray acceleration up to ultrahigh energies ($Egtrsim10^{18}$ eV). For an efficient cosmic-ray injection from blazars, $pgamma$ collisions with the extragalactic background light (EBL) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) can produce neutrino spectrum peaks near PeV and EeV energies, respectively. We analyze the contribution of these neutrinos to the diffuse background measured by the IceCube neutrino observatory. The fraction of neutrino luminosity originating from individual redshift ranges is calculated using the distribution of BL Lacs and FSRQs provided in the textit{Fermi}-LAT 4LAC catalog. Furthermore, we use a luminosity dependent density evolution to find the neutrino flux from unresolved blazars. The results obtained in our model indicate that as much as $approx10%$ of the flux upper bound at a few PeV energies can arise from cosmic-ray interactions on EBL. The same interactions will also produce secondary electrons and photons, initiating electromagnetic cascades. The resultant photon spectrum is limited by the isotropic diffuse $gamma$-ray flux measured between 100 MeV and 820 GeV. The latter, together with the observed cosmic-ray flux at $E>10^{16.5}$ eV, can constrain the baryonic loading factor depending on the maximum cosmic-ray acceleration energy.
We report polarization measurements in two prompt emissions of gamma-ray bursts, GRB 110301A and GRB 110721A, observed with the Gamma-ray burst polarimeter (GAP) aboard IKAROS solar sail mission. We detected linear polarization signals from each burst with polarization degree of $Pi = 70 pm 22$% with statistical significance of $3.7 sigma$ for GRB 110301A, and $Pi = 84^{+16}_{-28}$% with $3.3 sigma$ confidence level for GRB 110721A. We did not detect any significant change of polarization angle. These two events had shorter durations and dimmer brightness compared with GRB 100826A, which showed a significant change of polarization angle, as reported in Yonetoku et al. (2011). Synchrotron emission model can be consistent with all the data of the three GRBs, while photospheric quasi-thermal emission model is not favorable. We suggest that magnetic field structures in the emission region are globally-ordered fields advected from the central engine.
Previous researches on high-energy neutrino events from gamma-ray bursters (GRBs) suggest a neutrino speed variation $v(E)=c(1pm E/E^{ u}_{mathrm{LV}})$ with ${E}^{ u}_{rm LV}=(6.4pm 1.5)times10^{17}~{ rm GeV}$, together with an intrinsic time difference ${Delta {t}_{rm in}=(-2.8pm 0.7)times10^2~{rm s}}$, which means that high-energy neutrinos come out about 300~s earlier than low-energy photons in the source reference system. Considering the possibility that pre-bursts of neutrinos may be accompanied by high-energy photons, in this work we search for high-energy photon events with earlier emission time from 100 to 1000~s before low-energy photons at source by analyzing Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST) data. We perform the searching of photon events with energies larger than 100~MeV, and find 14 events from 48 GRBs with known redshifts. Combining these events with a $1.07~rm{TeV}$ photon event observed by the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov telescopes (MAGIC), we suggest a pre-burst stage with a long duration period of several minutes of high energy neutrino emissions accompanied by high energy photons at the GRB source.
The structure of Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) jets impacts on their prompt and afterglow emission properties. Insights into the still unknown structure of GRBs can be achieved by studying how different structures impact on the luminosity function (LF): i) we show that low ($10^{46} < L_{rm iso} < 10^{48}$ erg/s) and high (i.e. with $L_{rm iso} > 10^{50}$ erg/s) luminosity GRBs can be described by a unique LF; ii) we find that a uniform jet (seen on- and off-axis) as well as a very steep structured jet (i.e. $epsilon(theta) propto theta^{-s}$ with $s > 4$) can reproduce the current LF data; iii) taking into account the emission from the whole jet (i.e. including contributions from mildly relativistic, off-axis jet elements) we find that $E_{rm iso}(theta_{rm v})$ (we dub this quantity apparent structure) can be very different from the intrinsic structure $epsilon(theta)$: in particular, a jet with a Gaussian intrinsic structure has an apparent structure which is more similar to a power law. This opens a new viewpoint on the quasi-universal structured jet hypothesis.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been suggested as possible sources of the high-energy neutrino flux recently detected by the IceCube telescope. We revisit the fireball emission model and elaborate an analytical prescription to estimate the high-energy neutrino prompt emission from pion and kaon decays, assuming that the leading mechanism for the neutrino production is lepto-hadronic. To this purpose, we include hadronic, radiative and adiabatic cooling effects and discuss their relevance for long- (including high- and low-luminosity) and short-duration GRBs. The expected diffuse neutrino background is derived, by requiring that the GRB high-energy neutrino counterparts follow up-to-date gamma-ray luminosity functions and redshift evolutions of the long and short GRBs. Although dedicated stacking searches have been unsuccessful up to now, we find that GRBs could contribute up to a few % to the observed IceCube high-energy neutrino flux for sub-PeV energies, assuming that the latter has a diffuse origin. Gamma-ray bursts, especially low-luminosity ones, could however be the main sources of the IceCube high-energy neutrino flux in the PeV range. While high-luminosity and low-luminosity GRBs have comparable intensities, the contribution from the short-duration component is significantly smaller. Our findings confirm the most-recent IceCube results on the GRB searches and suggest that larger exposure is mandatory to detect high-energy neutrinos from high-luminosity GRBs in the near future.