Curvature effect in structured GRB jets

Abstract

We study the influence of jet structure on the curvature effect in a GRB-lightcurve. Using a simple model of jet emissivity, we numerically calculate lightcurves for a short flash from a relativistic outflow having various profiles of the Lorentz factor and outflowing energy density (gaussian, core+power-law). We find that for "on-beam" viewing geometry, with the line of sight passing through the bright core of the outflow, the shape of the lightcurve practically does not depend on the jet structure, initially following the temporal slope 2+delta, where delta is the spectral index. When the viewing angle is larger than the core, the light curve decaying slope is shallower. We discuss the implications of our results for the Swift data.