Meson Synchrotron Emission from Central Engines of Gamma-Ray Bursts with Strong Magnetic Fields.

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are presumed to be powered by the still unknown central engines with timescales in the range from 1 ms to approximately a few seconds. We propose that the GRB central engines would be a viable site for strong meson synchrotron emission if they were compact astrophysical objects, such as neutron stars or rotating black holes with extremely strong magnetic fields (H approximately 1012-1017 G), and if protons or heavy nuclei were accelerated to ultrarelativistic energies on the order of approximately 1012-1022 eV. We show that the charged scalar mesons like pi+/- and heavy vector mesons like rho, which have several decay modes onto pi+/-, could be emitted, with a high intensity that is a thousand times larger than photons, through strong couplings to ultrarelativistic nucleons. These meson synchrotron emission processes eventually produce a burst of very high energy cosmic neutrinos with 1012 eV</=Enu. These neutrinos are to be detected during the early-time duration of short GRBs.