High Efficiency of Gamma-Ray Bursts Revisited

Abstract

Using the conservation of energy and momentum during collisions of any two shells, we consider the efficiency of gamma-ray bursts by assuming that the ejecta from the central engine are equally massive and have the same Lorentz factors. We calculate the efficiency and the final Lorentz factor of the merged whole shell for different initial diversities of Lorentz factors and for different microscopic radiative efficiency. As a result, a common high efficiency in the range of 0.1 to 0.9 is considerable, and a very high value near 100% is also reachable if the diversity of the Lorentz factors is large enough.