Numerical Modeling of Relativistic Effects in Synchrotron-Emitting Shocks

Abstract

Synchrotron emission is seen in a vast array of astrophysical transients, such as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), radio supernovae, neutron star (NS) mergers, tidal disruption events (TDEs), and fast blue optical transients (FBOTs). Despite the ubiquity of synchrotron-emitting sources, modeling of the emergent flux from these events often relies on simplified analytic approximations. These approximations are inaccurate for high-velocity shocks, where special-relativistic effects are important. Properly incorporating these effects considerably complicates calculations, and generally requires a numerical treatment. In this work we present a novel numerical model which solves the full radiative-transfer problem in synchrotron-emitting shocks, accounting for all relativistic effects. This `full-volume' model is capable of calculating synchrotron emission from a shock of arbitrary velocity, and is designed to be flexible and applicable to a wide range of astrophysical sources. Using this new code, we evaluate the accuracy of more commonly-used approximate models. We find that the full-volume treatment is generally necessary once the shock proper-velocity exceeds $(\Gamma\beta)_{\rm sh}\gtrsim 0.1$, and that approximate models can be inaccurate by $\gtrsim$ an order-of-magnitude in trans-relativistic shocks. This implies that there may be a bias in the inferred physical properties of some FBOTs, jetted TDEs, and other relativistic explosions, where approximate analytic models are typically employed. The code associated with our model is made publicly available, and can be used to study the growing population of relativistic synchrotron-emitting transients.