Efficiency and spectrum of internal gamma-ray burst shocks

Abstract

We present an analysis of the Internal Shock Model of GRBs, where gamma-rays are produced by internal shocks within a relativistic wind. We show that observed GRB characteristics impose stringent constraints on wind and source parameters. We find that a significant fraction, of order 20 %, of the wind kinetic energy can be converted to radiation, provided the distribution of Lorentz factors within the wind has a large variance and provided the minimum Lorentz factor is higher than 10^(2.5)L_(52)^(2/9), where L=10^(52)L_(52)erg/s is the wind luminosity. For a high, >10 %, efficiency wind, spectral energy breaks in the 0.1 to 1 MeV range are obtained for sources with dynamical time R/c < 1 ms, suggesting a possible explanation for the observed clustering of spectral break energies in this range. The lower limit to wind Lorenz factor and the upper limit, around (R/10^7 cm)^(-5/6) MeV to observed break energies are set by Thomson optical depth due to electron positron pairs produced by synchrotron photons. Natural consequences of the model are absence of bursts with peak emission energy significantly exceeding 1 MeV, and existence of low luminosity bursts with low, 1 keV to 10 keV, break energies.