Gamma-Ray Burst Synthetic Spectra from Collisionless Shock PIC Simulations

Abstract

The radiation from afterglows of gamma-ray bursts is generated in the collisionless plasma shock interface between a relativistic outflow and a quiescent circum-burst medium. The two main ingredients responsible for the radiation are high-energy, non-thermal electrons and a strong magnetic field. In this Letter we present, for the first time, synthetic spectra extracted directly from first principles particle-in-cell simulations of relativist collisionless plasma shocks. The spectra are generated by a numerical Fourier transformation of the electrical far-field from each of a large number of particles, sampled directly from the particle-in-cell simulations. Both the electromagnetic field and the non-thermal particle acceleration are self-consistent products of the Weibel two-stream instability. We find that the radiation spectrum from a $Γ=15$ shock simulation show great resemblance with observed GRB spectra -- we compare specifically with that of GRB000301C.