Temporal variability in early afterglows of short gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

The shock model has successfully explained the observed behaviors of afterglows from long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Here we use it to investigate the so-called early afterglows from short GRBs, which arises from blast waves that are not decelerated considerably by their surrounding medium. We consider a nearby medium loaded with $e^{\pm}$ pairs (Beloborodov 2002). The temporal behaviors show first a soft-to-hard spectral evolution, from the optical to hard X-ray, and then a usual hard-to-soft evolution after the blast waves begin to decelerate. The light curves show variability, and consist of two peaks. The first peak, due to the pair effect, can be observed in the X-ray, though too faint and too short in the optical. The second peak will be easily detected by {\it Swift}. We show that detections of the double-peak structure in the light curves of early afterglows are very helpful to determine all the shock parameters of short GRBs, including both the parameters of the relativistic source and the surroundings. Besides, from the requirement that the forward-shock emission in short GRBs should be below the BATSE detection threshold, we give a strong constraint on the shock model parameters. In particular, the initial Lorentz factor of the source is limited to be no more than $\sim 10^3$, and the ambient medium density is inferred to be low, n\la 10^{-1} cm$^{-3}$.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, minor changes to match the publish in MNRA