Bulk Compton Emission in the GRB Internal Shock Model

Abstract

We investigate the role of the bulk Compton-scattering process in the internal shock model. We numerically show that the radiation field created by internal shocks does not affect the efficiency of the energy conversion in the shocks even if fireball outflows have highly nonuniform velocity distributions. However, the bulk Compton-scattering produces an additional high energy component especially when variability in the outflows arises because of a modulation of the mass injected into a constant energy flow. We show that an isotropic energy of $10^{50-51}$ ergs could be radiated in the range of 100MeV-GeV through the scattering process, provided that the shell's Lorentz factor varies between 10 and $10^4$.