GRB 080916C and GRB 090510: the high energy emission and the afterglow

Wei-Hong Gao, Jirong Mao, Dong Xu, Yi-Zhong Fan

Published 2009-08-27, updated 2009-10-29Version 3

We constrain the physical composition of the outflows of GRBs 080916C and 090510 with the prompt emission data and find that the former is likely magnetic while the latter may be baryonic. The X-ray and optical afterglow emission of both GRBs can be reasonably fitted using the standard external shock model but the density profiles of the circum-burst medium are different. We also propose a simple method to estimate the number of the seed photons suppose the GeV afterglow photons are due to the inverse Compton radiation of external forward shock electrons. The seed photons needed in the modeling are too many to be realistic for both events. The synchrotron radiation of the forward shock seems able to account for the GeV afterglow data.