Gamma-ray burst emission mechanisms
Open-knowledge reference entry
Gamma-ray burst emission mechanisms are theories that explain how the energy from a gamma-ray burst progenitor (regardless of the actual nature of the progenitor) is turned into radiation. These mechanisms are a major topic of research as of 2007. Neither the light curves nor the early-time spectra of GRBs show resemblance to the radiation emitted by any familiar physical process.
Compactness problem
It has been known for many years that ejection of matter at relativistic velocities (velocities very close to the speed of light) is a necessary requirement for producing the emission in a gamma-ray burst. GRBs vary on such short timescales (as short as milliseconds) that the size of the emitting region must be very small, or else the time delay due to the finite speed of light would "smear" the emission out in time, wiping out any short-timescale behavior. At the energies involved in a typical GRB, so much energy crammed into such a small space would make the system opaque to photon-photon pair production, making the burst far less luminous and also giving it a very different spectrum from what is observed. However, if the emitting system is moving towards Earth at relativistic velocities, the burst is compressed in time (as seen by an Earth observer, due to the relativistic Doppler effect) and the emitting region inferred from the finite speed of light becomes much smaller than the true size of the GRB (see relativistic beaming).
GRBs and internal shocks
A related constraint is imposed by the relative timescales seen in some bursts between the short-timescale variability and the total length of the GRB. Often this variability timescale is far shorter than the total burst length. For example, in bursts as long as 100 seconds, the majority of the energy can be released in short episodes less than 1 second long. If the GRB were due to matter moving towards Earth (as the relativistic motion argument enforces), it is hard to understand why it would release its energy in such brief interludes.
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