Non-thermal gamma-ray emission from delayed pair breakdown in a magnetized and photon-rich outflow

Abstract

We consider delayed, volumetric heating in a magnetized outflow that has broken out of a confining medium and expanded to a high Lorentz factor (Γ ∼ 102-103) and low optical depth to scattering (τT ∼ 10-3-10-2). The energy flux at breakout is dominated by the magnetic field, with a modest contribution from quasi-thermal gamma rays whose spectrum was calculated in Paper I. We focus on the case of extreme baryon depletion in the magnetized material, but allow for a separate baryonic component that is entrained from a confining medium. Dissipation is driven by relativistic motion between these two components, which develops once the photon compactness drops below 4 × 103(Ye /0.5)-1. We first calculate the acceleration of the magnetized component following breakout, showing that embedded MHD turbulence provides significant inertia, the neglect of which leads to unrealistically high estimates of flow Lorentz factor. After reheating begins, the pair and photon distributions are evolved self-consistently using a one-zone kinetic code that incorporates an exact treatment of Compton scattering, pair production and annihilation, and Coulomb scattering. Heating leads to a surge in pair creation, and the scattering depth saturates at τ T ∼ 1-4. The plasma maintains a very low ratio of particle to magnetic pressure, and can support strong anisotropy in the charged particle distribution, with cooling dominated by Compton scattering. High-energy power-law spectra with photon indices in the range observed in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs; -3 < β