Gamma-ray bursts: The central engine

Abstract

A variety of arguments suggest that the most common form of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), those longer than a few seconds, involve the formation of black holes in supernova-like events. Two kinds of “collapsar” models are discussed, those in which the black hole forms promptly—a second or so after iron core collapse—and those in which formation occurs later, following “fallback” over a period of minutes to hours. In most cases, extraction of energy from a rapidly accreting disk (and a rapidly rotating black hole) is achieved by magnetohydrodynamical processes, although neutrino-powered models remain viable in cases where the accretion rate is ≳0.05M⊙ s−1. GRBs are but one observable phenomenon accompanying black hole birth and other possibilities are discussed, some of which (long, faint GRBs and soft x-ray transients) may await discovery. Since they all involve black holes of similar mass accreting one to several M⊙, collapsars have a nearly standard total energy, around 1052 erg, but both the fraction of that energy ejected as highly relativistic matter and the distribution of that energy with angle can be highly variable. An explanation is presented why inferred GRB luminosity might correlate inversely with time scales and arguments are given against the production of ordinary GRBs by supergiant stars.