Effects of Magnetic Fields on Neutrino-dominated Accretion Model for Gamma-ray Bursts

Abstract

Many models of gamma-ray bursts suggest a common central engine: a black hole of several solar masses accreting matter from a disk at an accretion rate from 0.01 to 10 M⊙ s−1, the inner region of the disk is cooled by neutrino emission and large amounts of its binding energy are liberated, which could trigger the fireball. We improve the neutrino-dominated accreting flows by including the effects of magnetic fields. We find that more than half of the liberated energy can be extracted directly by the large-scale magnetic fields in the disk, and it turns out that the temperature of the disk is a bit lower than the neutrino-dominated accreting flows without magnetic field. Therefore, the outflows are magnetically-dominated rather than neutrino dominated. In our model, the neutrino mechanism can fuel some GRBs (not the brightest ones), but cannot fuel X-ray flares. The magnetic processes (both BZ and electromagnetic luminosity from a disk) are viable mechanisms for most of GRBs and their following X-ray flares.