Radio and Optical Emission, Spectral Shapes and Breaks in GRB

J. I. Katz

Published 1993-11-03Version 1

Relativistic blast wave models predict the spectrum of the emitted synchrotron radiation. The electrons in the shocked region are heated to a Wien distribution whose ``temperature'' is $1/3$ of the mean electron energy. This energy scale determines a characteristic (break) frequency of synchrotron radiation. At much lower frequencies a spectrum $F_nu \propto \nu^{1/3}$ is predicted independently of details of the emitting region. This is consistent with the observed soft X-ray spectra of GRB. It implies low visible and radio intensities, unless there are collective emission processes.