Neutrino-cooled accretion and GRB variability

Abstract

For accretion rates Mdot~0.1 Msun/s to a few solar mass black hole the inner part of the disk is expected to make a transition from advection dominance to neutrino cooling. This transition is characterized by sharp changes of the disk properties. I argue here that during this transition, a modest increase of the accretion rate leads to powerful enhancement of the Poynting luminosity of the GRB flow and decrease of its baryon loading. These changes of the characteristics of the GRB flow translate into changing gamma-ray spectra from the photosphere of the flow. The photospheric interpretation of the GRB emission explains the observed narrowing of GRB pulses with increasing photon energy and the luminosity-spectral peak relation within and among bursts.