A systematic description of shocks in gamma-ray bursts - I. Formulation

Abstract

Since the suggestion of relativistic shocks as the origin of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in early 90's, the mathematical formulation of this process has stayed at phenomenological level. One of the reasons for the slow development of theoretical works in this domain has been the simple power-law behaviour of the afterglows hours or days after the prompt gamma-ray emission. Nowadays with the launch of the Swift satellite, gamma-ray bursts can be observed in multi-wavelength from a few tens of seconds after trigger onward. These observations have leaded to the discovery of features unexplainable by the simple formulation of the shocks and emission processes used up to now. But "devil is in details" and some of these features may be explained with a more detailed formulation of phenomena and without adhoc addition of new processes. Such a formulation is the goal of this work. We present a consistent formulation of the collision between two spherical relativistic shells. The model can be applied to both internal and external shocks. Notably, we propose two phenomenological models for the evolution of the emitting region during the collision. One of these models is more suitable for the internal shocks and the other for the external collisions. We calculate radiation flux, lags, and hardness ratios. One of our aims has been a formulation enough complex to include the essential processes, but enough simple such that the data can be directly compared with the theory to extract the value and evolution of physical quantities. To accomplish this goal, we also suggest a procedure for extracting parameters of the model from data. In a following paper we numerically calculate the evolution of some simulated models and compare their features with the properties of the observed gamma-ray bursts.(abbreviated)