Stability of the Forward/Reverse‐Shock System Formed by the Impact of a Relativistic Fireball on an Ambient Medium | Zendy

Xiaohu Wang | Zendy; Abraham Loeb | Zendy; Eli Waxman | Zendy

AI Assistant Blog Pricing

Home ZAIA Blog

Open Access

Stability of the Forward/Reverse‐Shock System Formed by the Impact of a Relativistic Fireball on an Ambient Medium

Author(s) -

Xiaohu Wang,

Abraham Loeb,

Eli Waxman

Publication year - 2002

Publication title -

the astrophysical journal

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.376

H-Index - 489

eISSN - 1538-4357

pISSN - 0004-637X

DOI - 10.1086/339163

Subject(s) - afterglow , shock (circulatory) , physics , shock wave , gamma ray burst , stability (learning theory) , mechanics , phase (matter) , astrophysics , quantum mechanics , medicine , machine learning , computer science

We analyze the stability of a relativistic double (forward/reverse) shocksystem which forms when the fireball of a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) impacts on thesurrounding medium. We find this shock system to be stable to linear globalperturbations for either a uniform or a wind (r^{-2}) density profile of theambient medium. For the wind case, we calculate analytically the frequencies ofthe normal modes which could modulate the early short-term variability of GRBafterglows. We find that perturbations in the double shock system could induceoscillatory fluctuations in the observed flux on short (down to seconds) timescales during the early phase of an afterglow.Comment: ApJ, submitted, 26 pages, 5 figure

The content you want is available to Zendy users.

Already have an account? Click here to sign in.

Having issues? You can contact us here

Accelerating Research