Solution To The Gamma Ray Burst Mystery?

Abstract

Photoexcitation and ionization of partially ionized heavy atoms in highly relativistic flows by interstellar photons, followed by their reemission in radiative recombination and decay, boost star-light into beamed $γ$ rays along the flow direction. Repeated excitation/decay of highly relativistic baryonic ejecta from merger or accretion induced collapse of neutron stars in dense stellar regions (DSRs), like galactic cores, globular clusters and super star-clusters, can convert enough kinetic energy in such events in distant galaxies into cosmological gamma ray bursts (GRBs). The model predicts remarkably well all the main observed temporal and spectral properties of GRBs. Its success strongly suggests that GRBs are $γ$ ray tomography pictures of DSRs in galaxies at cosmological distances with unprecedented resolution: A time resolution of $dt\sim 1~ms$ in a GRB can resolve stars at a Hubble distance which are separated by only $D\sim 10^{10}cm$. This is equivalent to the resolving power of an optical telescope with a diameter larger than one Astronomical Unit!