The Cannonball Model of Gamma Ray Bursts: Lines in the X-Ray Afterglow

Abstract

Recent observations suggest that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows are produced by jets of highly relativistic cannonballs (CBs), emitted in supernova explosions. The fully ionized CBs cool to a temperature below 4500 K within a day or two, at which point electron-proton recombination produces an intense Lyman-$α$ emission. The line energy is Doppler-shifted by the CBs' motion to X-ray energies in the observer's frame. The measured line energies, corrected for their cosmological redshift, imply Doppler factors in the range 600 to 1000, consistent with those estimated -in the CB model- from the characteristics of the $γ$-ray bursts. All other observed properties of the lines are also well described by the CB model. Scattering and self-absorption of the recombination lines within the CB also produce a wide-band flare-up in the GRB afterglow, as the observations indicate. A very specific prediction of the CB model is that the X-ray lines ought to be narrow and move towards lower line energies as they are observed: their current apparently large widths would be the effect of time integration, and/or of the blending of lines from CBs with different Doppler factors.