Numerical Simulation of Photospheric Emission in Long Gamma-Ray Bursts: Prompt Correlations, Spectral Shapes, and Polarizations

Abstract

We explore the properties of photospheric emission in the context of long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) using three numerical models that combine relativistic hydrodynamical simulations and Monte Carlo radiation transfer calculations in three dimensions. Our simulations confirm that photospheric emission gives rise to correlations between the spectral peak energy and luminosity that agree with the observed Yonetoku, Amati, and Golenetskii correlations. It is also shown that the spectral peak energy and luminosity correlate with the bulk Lorentz factor, as indicated in the literature. On the other hand, synthetic spectral shapes tend to be narrower than those of the observations. This result indicates that an additional physical process that can provide nonthermal broadening is needed to reproduce the spectral features. Furthermore, the polarization analysis finds that, while the degree of polarization is low for the emission from the jet core (Π < 4%), it tends to increase with viewing angle outside of the core and can be as high as Π ∼ 20%–40% in an extreme case. This suggests that the typical GRBs show systematically low polarization compared to softer, dimmer counterparts (X-ray-rich GRBs and X-ray flashes). Interestingly, our simulations indicate that photospheric emission exhibits large temporal variation in the polarization position angle (Δ ψ ∼ 90°), which may be compatible with those inferred in observations. A notable energy dependence of the polarization property is another characteristic feature found in the current study. Particularly, the difference in the position angle among different energy bands can be as large as ∼90°.

Keywords

• Gamma-ray bursts
• Radiative transfer simulations
• Hydrodynamical simulations