Magnetic Acceleration and Collimation of Gamma-Ray Burst Jets

Abstract

Exact semianalytic solutions for GRB outflows were recently derived using the equations of special-relativistic ideal MHD (see Vlahakis & Konigl in these Proceedings for a summary). This contribution focuses on the implications of these results to various modeling and observational issues in GRB sources, including the baryon loading problem, polarization measurements of the prompt and reverse-shock emission, and the possible existence of a two-component outflow.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to appear in proceedings of 2003 Gamma-Ray Burst Conference (Santa Fe, New Mexico, September 8-12, 2003), to be published by AI