GRB Prompt Emission with Anisotropic Electron Distribution

Abstract

Abstract The typical spectrum of the prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) indicates that the electron cooling is suppressed in spite of the strong magnetic field in the standard synchrotron model. Recent particle-in-cell simulations show that the particle acceleration by magnetic reconnection in a magnetically dominated plasma can lead to small pitch angles especially in a low-energy region. Such a small pitch angle prevents electrons from cooling via synchrotron radiation. In this paper, taking into account the effects of the synchrotron cooling and the adiabatic cooling, we numerically calculate the synchrotron spectra with anisotropic electron distributions. If we require a Poynting flux larger than 1050 erg s−1 as the model is motivated by magnetic reconnection, the bulk Lorentz factor of ∼1000 and the electron minimum Lorentz factor of γ min ∼ 104 are required to reproduce the typical GRB spectrum.