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# Flaring up: radio diagnostics of the kinematic, hydrodynamic and environmental properties of GRBs

## 1 Introduction

The prompt and extremely bright optical flash in GRB 990123 (Akerlof et al. 1999) was accompanied by a strong radio flare (Kulkarni et al. 1999). Peaking at $``$1 day, the flare was unlike usual radio afterglows which rise to maximum on a timescale of weeks or even months. The simplest interpretation of this radio flare is that it arises from the reverse shock component of the external shock (Sari $`\&`$ Piran 1999, hereinafter SP99). The reverse shock (hereinafter RS) propagates into the adiabatically cooled particles of the coasting ejecta, thereby shocking the shell material and producing a prompt optical flash. The RS emission then weakens rapidly and shifts to lower energies, eventually crossing the observed radio band. Indeed, it has been shown that the radio counterpart to GRB 990123 is compatible with estimates derived from scaling down the prompt optical emission to the epoch of the radio afterglow observations (Kulkarni et al. 1999).

It turns out that there is a broad range of model parameters for which a strong optical flash is expected to precede the main GRB afterglow (Soderberg $`\&`$ Ramirez-Ruiz 2002; hereinafter SR02). Such flashes are, however, difficult to detect in the current observing modes (Akerlof et al. 2000, Paczyński 2001). On the other hand, the specific incidence of radio flares of 1:4 (Djorgovski et al. 2001) appears to be significantly larger than that of the prompt optical emission obtained by ROTSE (Kehoe et al. 2001) or LOTIS (Williams et al. 2000). This abundance, together with the reverse shock interpretation, suggests that the radio flare phenomenon has the potential to shed new light on the physics of GRBs. Motivated by this interpretation, we have estimated the strength of the radio flare expected from bursts in which broadband observations have been able to constrain the physical parameters of the forward shock (hereinafter FS) emission (Panaitescu $`\&`$ Kumar 2001b; Panaitescu $`\&`$ Kumar 2002, hereinafter PK02). We use all 6 bursts (980519, 990123, 990510, 991208, 991216, 000418) which are found to be adiabatic (i.e. $`\nu _m<\nu _c`$) for reasonable assumptions about $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and thus predicted to have a strong RS. Radiative bursts (e.g. 970508) are not selected since the reverse shock component is significantly quenched in this regime, and therefore the observations in these cases are dominated entirely by emission from the forward shock. By evolving prompt optical flux estimates to the epoch of radio afterglow observations, we are able to discern whether a contribution from the RS could have been detected. We find that for $`\frac{1}{2}`$ of the bursts for which the cooling frequency is larger than the typical synchrotron frequency, the predicted RS emission (which is generally found to lie in the mildly relativistic temperature regime) combined with that of the FS produces an improved fit to the radio afterglow data. As we shall discuss, the strong dependence of the peak time of this radio flare on the bulk Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ provides a way to measure this elusive parameter. Accepting the conclusion that the radio flare arises from the RS, we then place constraints on the velocity of source expansion and hence on the density and profile of the medium in the immediate vicinity of six bursts (980519, 990123, 990510, 991208, 991216, 000418). These constraints provide environmental diagnostics for GRBs and are compared with the main types of environments considered for afterglows. We assume $`H_0=65\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$.

## 2 The reverse shock: optical flash to radio flare

Observations of the optical flash associated with GRB 990123 confirmed earlier predictions of prompt emission from a RS (Mészáros $`\&`$ Rees 1999, hereinafter MR99; SP99). Although it contains a comparable amount of internal energy to that of the FS, the RS bears a temperature which is significantly lower (typically by a factor of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$). As it crosses the shell, the RS produces a single short burst of emission which is predicted to peak in the optical band with reasonable assumptions for the burst physical parameters (MR99). The time of peak emission, $`t_{\mathrm{peak}}`$, strongly depends on the initial bulk Lorentz factor of the burst. For high $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ the peak time is comparable to the duration of the burst while for low $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ it typically occurs at later times. More specifically, the peak time is defined as

$$t_{\mathrm{peak}}=\mathrm{max}[\mathrm{\Delta }/c,t_{\mathrm{dec}}],$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the width of the shell. Here, $`t_{\mathrm{dec}}`$, is the time at which the inertia of the swept-up matter significantly decelerates the shell ejecta

$$t_{\mathrm{dec}}=\left(\frac{3E}{32\pi \mathrm{\Gamma }_0^8n_0m_pc^5}\right)^{1/3},$$
(2)
where $`E`$ is the isotropic energy of the burst and $`n_0`$ characterises the density of the external medium (SP99). $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ can be inferred directly from the observed burst duration ($`t_{\mathrm{dur}}`$) by noting that $`\mathrm{\Delta }=ct_{\mathrm{dur}}/(1+z)`$ and assuming the shell does not undergo significant spreading (Piran 1999). At a given time (e.g. $`r_{\mathrm{peak}}`$), the broadband RS spectrum can be described by the ordering of the three synchrotron break frequencies: the self-absorption frequency $`\nu _a`$, the cooling frequency $`\nu _c`$ and the characteristic synchrotron frequency $`\nu _m`$. For spectra with $`\nu _a<\nu _m<\nu _c`$, the RS is adiabatic while for $`\nu _a<\nu _c<\nu _m`$ the RS is radiative, and so the electrons are cooled quickly. Although a radiative RS could demonstrate a peak flux of comparable brightness to an adiabatic blast wave, the emission would be rapidly quenched making it exceedingly difficult to detect.

### 2.1 Relativistic versus subrelativistic

The RS spectral break frequencies are easily calculated by comparing them to those of the FS (MR99; SP99; Panaitescu & Kumar 2000). By assuming equality of velocity and pressure across the contact discontinuity separating the shocks, it is possible to define the properties of the reverse shocked region in terms of $`n_0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ (Blandford $`\&`$ McKee 1976; hereinafter BM). However, unlike the FS, the RS is not always relativistic (Sari & Piran 1995). Shells satisfying

$$\xi \left(\frac{E}{n_0m_pc^2}\right)^{1/6}\times \mathrm{\Delta }^{1/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^{4/3}>>1$$
(3)
are thin and are likely to have a Newtonian RS, which is typically too weak to decelerate the shell effectively. On the contrary, for thick shells ($`\xi <<1`$), the RS is relativistic and thus successfully described by BM solution. For an adiabatic blast wave peaking at $`\nu _m`$, the thin shell spectral energy equations are given by

$$\nu _m=5.8\times 10^9ϵ_{e,1}^2ϵ_{B,2}^{1/2}n_0^{1/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^2(1+z)^{1/4}\mathrm{Hz}$$
(4)
$$F_{\nu ,\mathrm{max}}=4.2\times 10^5D_{28}^2ϵ_{B,2}^{1/2}E_{50}n_0^{1/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(1+z)^{3/8}\mathrm{Jy},$$
(5)
while for the thick shell case we have

$$\nu _m=1\times 10^8ϵ_{e,1}^2ϵ_{B,2}^{1/2}n_0^{1/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^2(1+z)^{1/2}\mathrm{Hz}$$
(6)
$$F_{\nu ,\mathrm{max}}=6.0D_{28}^2ϵ_{B,2}^{1/2}E_{50}^{5/4}n_0^{1/4}\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^1t_{\mathrm{dur}}^{3/4}(1+z)^{1/2}\mathrm{Jy},$$
(7)
where $`F_{\nu ,\mathrm{max}}`$ is the spectral peak flux, $`ϵ_e`$ and $`ϵ_B`$ are the equipartition functions for the electrons ($`e`$) and for the magnetic field ($`B`$) respectively, and $`D`$ is the luminosity distance of the burst. Here we adopt the convention $`Q=10^xQ_x`$ for expressing the physical parameters. It is important to note that in the thin shell regime $`F_{\nu ,\mathrm{max}}`$ scales directly with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ while for the thick shell regime the relation is inverted.

### 2.2 Light curves of the reverse shock emission

Unlike the synchrotron spectrum, the afterglow light curve at a fixed frequency strongly depends on the hydrodynamics of the relativistic shell, which determines the temporal evolution of the break frequencies. In a mildly relativistic RS ($`\xi >1`$), the temperature of the shocked material is non-relativistic and so the late-time evolution of the ejecta no longer follows the BM solution. Furthermore, the Sedov-Taylor solution is not applicable due to the the relativistic bulk Lorentz factor of the fluid (Kobayashi & Sari 2000; hereinafter KS00). The hydrodynamic evolution of a mildly relativistic RS therefore lies in a regime for which there are no analytic solutions available. In order to constrain the evolution of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in this regime it is common to assume (MR99; KS00)

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }R^g\mathrm{with}(3/2g7/2)$$
(8)
The limits on $`g`$ reflect two evolutionary pathways of the pressure. Adiabatic expansion ($`p\rho ^{4/3}`$) is assumed for $`g=3/2`$ while $`g=7/2`$ corresponds to the case of pressure equilibrium, i.e. when the pressure of the FS matches that of the ejecta. Using the relation $`tR/\mathrm{\Gamma }^2c`$, one can obtain the scaling of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in terms of the observer-frame time, which is given by

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }t^{g/(1+2g)}.$$
(9)
The pressure and density then scale as

$$pt^{8(3+g)/7(1+2g)}\rho t^{6(3+g)/7(1+2g)}.$$
(10)
Application of these scalings to a slow cooling RS gives the spectral evolution as a function of $`g`$. For an adiabatic blast wave, it can be shown that $`\nu _m\mathrm{\Gamma }p^{5/2}\rho ^2`$ and $`F_{\nu _m}\mathrm{\Gamma }p^{1/2}`$ (KS00). In terms of the observer-frame time, these scalings are then

$$\nu _mt^{3(8+5g)/7(1+2g)}F_{\nu _m}t^{(12+11g)/7(1+2g)}.$$
(11)
Following the peak optical emission, with the passage of time, the light from the RS shifts rapidly to lower frequencies. After the RS peak frequency $`\nu _m`$ crosses the observing frequency it decays rapidly. The evolution of the radio flux for frequencies above $`\nu _m`$ is typically found by assuming a distribution of injected electrons with power law of index $`p`$ above a minimum Lorentz factor $`\gamma _i`$. The corresponding spectral flux at a given frequency above $`\nu _m`$ is then given by $`F_\nu F_{\nu _m}(\nu /\nu _m)^{(p1)/2}`$; with $`F_\nu \nu ^2`$ at low frequencies ($`\nu <\nu _a`$) and $`F_\nu \nu ^{1/3}`$ bridging the two regimes. Together with the scalings of equation 11, the above expression gives the evolution of the radio flare immediately after the $`\nu _m`$ crossing:

$$F_\nu T^{(7+24p+15pg)/14(1+2g)}\nu >\nu _m$$
(12)
It should be noted that for a typical spectral index $`p=2.5`$, the flux decay index varies in a relatively narrow range ($`0.4`$) between the theoretical limits of $`g=[1/2,3/2]`$. Since the flux decay index is a monotonic function of $`g`$ it is not very sensitive to it, and consequently the decay shape is more strongly affected by the value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ than of $`g`$. As demonstrated in Section 3, the quality of GRB radio observations is not yet sufficient to place robust constraints on $`g`$, and thus the hydrodynamic evolution of the RS is currently not well determined.

## 3 Constraining the kinematics and hydrodynamical evolution of the reverse shock

Despite ongoing observational searches, GRB 990123 remains one of few bursts for which a radio flare has been observed. The ability to detect flares depends on both the strength and peak time of the optical flash as well as the subsequent flux decay index. In turn, these observables depend on the ambiguous dynamics of the reverse shock. By constraining the kinematic and hydrodynamic properties of the shock, we may enable observational strategies for radio flare detection to be improved. Moreover, as we will demonstrate, constraints on the physics of the RS may provide us with environmental diagnostics of GRBs. In this section, we present a method to determine the properties of the RS through modelling of the early radio afterglow observations. We constrain both the velocity of source expansion $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and the evolutionary index $`g`$ of the RS in bursts for which multi-wavelength observations have been able to determine the physical parameters of the FS. We use all 6 bursts (980519, 990123, 990510, 991208, 991216, 000418) which are found to be adiabatic (i.e. $`\nu _m<\nu _c`$) for reasonable assumptions about $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$. Assuming that the burst equipartition values for the FS are shared by the RS, we apply the formalism developed in the previous section to determine the spectral and temporal evolution of the RS. We estimate the strength of the RS contribution in the radio band during the epoch of afterglow observations. Through combining our radio flare estimates with predictions for the FS emission (obtained by PK02), we are able to estimate the combination of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and $`g`$ which provides the best $`\chi ^2`$ fit to the early radio data. We consider both cases where the temperature of the shocked shell is relativistic or not. This is particularly important since for reasonable assumptions about the velocity of source expansion we find in all cases that $`\xi 1`$. For $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^2<1`$, the fit is improved by including emission from the RS. We will show that although current RS theory predicts a detectable radio flare component for a wide range of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and $`g`$ parameter values, it appears to be observationally supported for only some bursts. Below we discuss the radio emission and RS modelling of the individual GRBs. A summary of results are listed in Table 1.

### 3.1 GRB 980519

The broadband modelling of the FS emission by PK02 was found to overestimate the radio observations at early times. The addition of a RS contribution to the FS emission serves only to worsen the fit. Assuming the thin regime solution, we find that a minimum flux contribution is expected from the RS for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0490`$ and $`g1.5`$. Thick shell solutions for this burst do not converge since the predicted radio flare decreases indefinitely with increasing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$. Therefore, we can only determine a lower limit of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>230`$ for this regime. These constraints imply a mildly relativistic RS with $`\xi 1`$. In this case, neither the thick nor thin regime are ruled out by the observations. For these values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and $`g`$, the radio observations are fit with a FS + RS emission model giving a similar $`\chi ^2`$ to that of the FS alone. We find a reduced $`\chi ^2=12`$ and a ratio of of the quality of the fits gives $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^2=1.4`$ for the thin shell case (see Figure 1). It should be noted that the $`\chi ^2`$ ratio can in principle decrease for values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>1000`$ and $`g=1.5`$, however, with a peak time of only a few seconds, this solution is clearly inconsistent with the constraints given by equation 1. Therefore, by assuming the results for $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^2=1.4`$ as our best fit, we find this solution to be in agreement with the previous estimate by PK02 of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>250`$.

Here we comment on the structure of the $`\chi ^2`$ region for this burst as a representative of the larger sample included within this study. First, it should be noted that the unusual shape of the $`\chi ^2`$ region is the result of an intrinsic coupling between the fitted parameters, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and $`g`$. Although a more proper treatment of the uncertainty region would include a full Monte Carlo analysis to determine the error region, this level of complexity is not warranted by the quality of available data. We therefore apply standard $`\chi ^2`$ fitting techniques to build two dimensional uncertainty regions and emphasize that these represent only approximate confidence regions. Current theory dictates that the uncertainty region for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ has a lower boundary of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_030`$ due to the lack of photon-photon attenuation (Mészáros, Laguna & Rees 1993) and an upper boundary of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_010^3`$ based on the pulse width evolution of the prompt emission (Ramirez-Ruiz & Fenimore 2000). These theoretical bounds should be adopted as the overall uncertainty region for each of the bursts within this sample. Secondly, it should be noted that the sharp inflection points traced by the confidence region are an artifact of the discontinuity imposed by the transition from a non-relativitsic to a relativistic regime. The tendency for the best-fit value of $`g`$ to favour the parameter space extrema demonstrates that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ is the dominant parameter in this model and thus the Lorentz factor drives the spectral evolution of the RS emission within this parameter space (as discussed in Section 2.2).

### 3.2 GRB 990123

Early radio observations of GRB 990123 revealed a flare rising to maximum after $`1`$ day and then rapidly fading away (Kulkarni et al. 1999). The strong dimming of the radio emission after $`2`$ days excluded a FS origin. The simplest interpretation was that it arises from the RS (Kulkarni et al. 1999; Panaitescu & Kumar 2000). As expected, the FS modelling by PK02 significantly underestimates the radio emission at the time of the flare. By including a RS contribution, a FS + RS emission model improves the fit by a factor of $`100`$. Best fit values are obtained for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0850`$ ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0240`$) and $`g3.4`$ ($`g3.3`$) for the thin (thick) shell case (Figures 2 and 3). Both regimes predict a mildly relativistic RS with $`\xi `$ values of $``$ 1 and $``$ 6 for the thin and thick shell solutions, respectively. Despite the differences between the regimes, both solutions show a minimum at $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2=0.3`$ which gives a ratio $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^20.01`$, thus demonstrating a remarkable improvement to the FS fit. Note that the inclusion of self-absorption effects, which are not included in the FS model of PK01 or the FS+RS model presented here, may enable a better description of the radio observations before one day (the reader is referred to SP99 for this matter). It should be commented that within the $`1\sigma `$ uncertainty region of the thin regime solution, there is a secondary minimum which occurs for lower Lorentz factors, near $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0400`$ and $`g3.5`$. This solution corresponds to a peak time of 200 seconds which is clearly inconsistent with the observed optical light-curve which peaks at $`50`$ seconds (Akerlof et al. 1999). Based on the observed behaviour of the optical flash, which is successfully described by a mildly relativistic shell (see Kobayashi 2000), we thus conclude that the thin shell solution is the regime which better describes the RS behaviour. We find the values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ consistent with previous estimates for this burst: $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_01200`$ (Wang, Dai $`\&`$ Lu, 2000), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=1400\pm 700`$ (Panaitescu $`\&`$ Kumar, 2001a), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0900\pm 100`$ (SR02), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>180`$ (Lithwick $`\&`$ Sari 2001, hereinafter LS01), and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>300`$ (PK02). Estimates for the dimensionless thickness parameter, $`\xi `$, are similarly in agreement and include: $`\xi 0.7`$ (KS00) and $`\xi =0.99`$ (SR02). Furthermore, the hydrodynamical evolution has previously been characterised by $`g=2.2`$ (KS00) which is consistent within our approximate 1 $`\sigma `$ uncertainty region.

### 3.3 GRB 990510

As in the case of GRB 980519, the broadband modelling of the FS emission of this burst overestimates the radio observations at early times (PK02). We find that a minimum flux contribution from the RS can be attained from the thin shell equations by setting $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0270`$ and $`g1.5`$. The thick shell solution provides only a constraint of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>230`$. This RS is found to be mildly relativistic with $`\xi 1`$. A FS + RS model gives a best fit value with $`\chi ^2=8.5`$ and $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^28.0`$ indicating that the standard FS fit is still preferred (see Figure 4). A better $`\chi ^2`$ ratio ($`1`$) can be obtained for values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>2000`$ and $`g=1.5`$. We disregard this solution, however, as it corresponds to $`t_{\mathrm{peak}}<1`$ s. Note that these results are in agreement with the estimate of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>140`$ derived by PK02 and the lower limit of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>79`$ by LS01.

### 3.4 GRB 991208

Broadband fits to the FS of GRB 991208 included two sets of radio lights curves observed at 8.5 GHz and 15 GHz. We calculate radio flare predictions for both observing frequencies. At 15 GHz, the FS prediction underestimates the data (PK02). By adding a RS contribution, we find the ratio $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^2`$ can be improved by a factor of $`2`$ for both thin and thick solutions. Best FS + RS fits are produced using $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0130`$ and $`g=3.5`$ for the thick shell equations which give $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^21.5`$ and a ratio of $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^20.4`$. The thin shell solution is similar in quality, with best values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0110`$ $`g1.9`$, giving $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^21.9`$ and a ratio of $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^20.5`$. Both regimes predict a mildly relativistic RS with $`\xi 1`$. At 8.5 GHz, a thin RS is unable to provide solutions which improve the FS fit. The best result gives $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^2/\chi _{\mathrm{FS}}^21.4`$ for values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0110`$ and $`g1.5`$. Thick shell equations fail to converge and therefore predict only a lower limit of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>130`$. Combining the two solution sets should generally enable further constraints. For this case, however, combining the sets merely reproduces the 15 GHz solution since this set of results is statistically dominant. Therefore, we quote the 15 GHz results as our best fits for this RS solution (Figures 5 and 6). Notice that the results are consistent with the PK02 limit of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>68`$.

### 3.5 GRB 991216

Early radio observations of GRB 991216 suggest the emission was already in decline after $`t1`$ day (Frail et al. 2000). As a result, efforts to fit the radio light-curve with a standard FS emission model proved difficult. Broadband fits by Panaitescu & Kumar (2000) underestimate the early radio observations and claim that interstellar scintillation is essential in explaining the departures between observations and model fluxes. Alternative models have also been suggested, including a dual fireball, and a RS flare (Frail et al. 2000, Panaitescu & Kumar 2000). We find that the fit can be improved by a factor of $`2`$ by including emission from the RS. Both thick and thin shell solutions give $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^24.2`$. The thin shell solution favours a mildly relativistic RS with best fit values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0680`$ and $`g1.55`$ (Figure 7) while the thick shell solution gives a highly relativistic solution with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_01200`$ and $`g1.5`$ (Figure 8). We note that this solution corresponds to a peak time less than $`2`$ sec which is considerably smaller than the estimated light width of the shell $`15`$ s. Both thick and thin regimes produce RS solutions which are consistent with the PK02 constraint of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>150`$.

### 3.6 GRB 000418

Broadband afterglow fits to the FS emission are in agreement with the radio observations (Berger et al. 2001; PK02). It is clear that the addition of a RS contribution will not improve the fit to the radio light-curve. A minimum flux contribution is expected from the RS for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0150`$ and $`g1.5`$ assuming a thin shell (Figure 9). This implies a mildly relativistic RS with $`\xi 2`$. The radio flux in the thick shell solution decreases with increasing bulk Lorentz factor and thus we can only determine a lower limit of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0>50`$ for this regime. It is emphasised that the $`\chi ^2`$ ratio never falls below 1 (with the best fit $`\chi _{\mathrm{FS}+\mathrm{RS}}^29.7`$) for all values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and $`g`$. It also should be noted that the relatively large uncertainty region for this burst is due to the predicted faintness of the radio flare at the epoch of observations ($`10`$ days).

### 3.7 Caveats

A number of caveats apply to our analysis. First and foremost, the hydrodynamical and kinematical constraints presented here have been calculated under the assumption that the radio flare arises from the reverse shock component of the blast wave (MR99 and SP99). Within the grounds of the FS model, the radio flare (and in particular those observed in 990123, 991216 and 991208) can be accounted for only if the characteristic frequencies can be evolved much faster than that given by standard dynamics (as argued also by Kulkarni et al. 1999 for 990123). In contrast, the RS model provides a natural and consistent explanation for the radio flare.

In the framework of “standard” afterglow models - by which we mean models that assume a power-law-shocked particle spectrum and a constant fraction of energy in electrons and magnetic fields relative to the thermal energy of the shocked particles - we have estimated the RS spectra by assuming that the equipartition values for the FS component are unchanged across the contact discontinuity. Although the validity of this assumption is questionable, it is a convenient method of estimating these illusive parameters until more is known about the microphysics of GRB shocks. We test the strength of this assumption by altering $`ϵ_B`$ (the parameter for which there is larger uncertainty) by two to three orders of magnitude. The effect of strongly increasing $`ϵ_B`$ is only a slight shift in the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ \- $`g`$ confidence regions. Such shifts, however, are always found to lie within the uncertainty regions given for each burst, thus supporting the validity of our results.

The premise of our work has been that the physical parameters derived by PK02 provide a robust description of the FS emission. Most importantly, we assume that the PK02 parameters are not significantly biased by neglecting the effects of a RS component. This assumption is supported by the fact that the PK02 results are weighted towards the optical and X-ray data where the sampling frequency was large, the observational errors were small, and the RS component was negligible on timescales $`1`$ day. With sparse observations and large error bars, the radio data clearly does not constrain the multi-frequency fit at the same level as the optical. The RS predictions presented here, for all bursts in our sample, proved to be generally consistent with the observed light-curves, and it is critical to note that none of the RS predictions significantly over-estimated the observed radio emission, even at early times. Our RS predictions therefore provide consistency checks for PK02 physical parameters, which we find to be in agreement.

## 4 The elusive $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$

As discussed in SR02, the bulk Lorentz factor plays a critical role in the majority of GRB emission models (see Piran 1999 for a review). The Lorentz factor, however, has also proven to be one of the most difficult physical parameters to constrain from gamma-ray burst observations. Based on theoretical predictions and sparse observations, present estimates stretch over two orders of magnitude: $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_01010^3`$ (e.g. Mészáros, Laguna & Rees 1993; Wang, Dai $`\&`$ Lu 2000; Ramirez-Ruiz & Fenimore 2000; PK02; LS01; SR02). Here we present constraints on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ for 6 of the best-sampled bursts observed to date. Although the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ constraints are still quite broad in some cases (e.g. 000418), information may still be gained from the collective $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ distribution for our data set. As a method of investigating this, we treat each burst’s constraint as a probability distribution and produce a total histogram by summing over the 6 normalised distributions. Specifically, for each burst, we construct a one dimensional probability histogram for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$, given by $`p_i(\mathrm{\Gamma })d\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. Here, $`p_i(\mathrm{\Gamma })d\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ represents the frequency of each $`d\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ value within the 1-$`\sigma `$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0g`$ confidence region. The $`p_i(\mathrm{\Gamma })d\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ probability histograms are each normalised to unity before summing them to create a total probability histogram, constructed as $`p(\mathrm{\Gamma })d\mathrm{\Gamma }=_ip_i(\mathrm{\Gamma })d\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. Figure 10 plots the total probability histogram for the data set as a shaded and smoothed curve. A Gaussian fit to the total histogram is over plotted with a mean value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=150`$. It should be noted that the distribution is weighted heavily to the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ constraints derived for GRB 991208, since this burst was the most tightly constrained within the data set (due to additional observations at 15 GHz). To remove this burst from the total probability histogram leaves 5 bursts with radio flare constraints derived from 8.46 GHz data only. The total probability histogram associated with this smaller set of bursts has a larger mean bulk Lorentz factor which may represent the collective constraints more accurately, with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=270`$. We emphasise that this mean value is consistent with lower limits on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ as derived by LS01 for a set of 12 bursts and also with estimates for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ by PK02 for 10 bursts. As additional $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ constraints are gathered from future bursts, the distribution of Lorentz factors should offer vital clues concerning the diversity of GRB source expansion velocities.

## 5 GRB environments and progenitors

Models for the GRB afterglows indicate that the emission comes from a region $`10^{16}10^{18}`$ cm from the source of the explosion. The nature of the material depends on the GRB progenitors, which are at present not known. The question of a wind versus a constant density medium is a crucial one, since massive stars, one of the leading candidates for GRB progenitors (e.g. Woosley 1993; Paczynski 1998), should be surrounded by a $`\rho r^2`$ wind (unless a supernova explosion occurs before the burst; Vietri & Stella 1998; Konigl & Granot 2002; Guetta & Granot 2002). In contrast, GRBs resulting from compact star mergers, the other leading candidate, are expected to be surrounded by the interstellar medium (e.g. Lattimer & Schramm 1976; Paczyński 1986; Narayan, Paczyński & Piran 1992; Perna & Belczynski 2002; Rosswog & Ramirez-Ruiz 2002).

Considerable discussion has recently been given to whether the expected $`r^2`$ density structure for a stellar wind is compatible with analysis of the afterglow light curves (e.g. CL00; Lazzati & Perna 2002; PK02; Price et al. 2002). PK02 found that in half of the cases they modelled, a homogeneous ambient medium accommodates the afterglow emission better than the wind-like medium. Although wind-like external medium solutions were reported as being a poor match to the data in the other cases, PK02 include them as possible alternatives for 3 of the 6 bursts in our sample: 991208, 991216, and 000418. To adopt the $`r^2`$ solutions for these 3 bursts would place their RSs in the radiative (fast cooling) regime. At best, a wind medium radiative RS can attain an optical peak flux which is comparable in magnitude to the homogeneous medium adiabatic case. For typical parameters, however, the optical flux is 6 times fainter in an wind environment than the constant density medium case (CL00). Specifically, the peak flux is given by

$`F_{\nu ,max}`$ $`=`$ $`46(1+X)\left({\displaystyle \frac{1+z}{2}}\right)^{1/2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\sqrt{2}}{1+z\sqrt{1+z}}}\right)^2`$ (13)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_B}{0.1}}\right)^{1/4}{\displaystyle \frac{E_{52}^{5/4}}{A_{}^{1/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{0,3}\mathrm{\Delta }_{10}^{3/4}}}\mathrm{mJy}`$
where $`X`$ is the fractional abundance of hydrogen ($`0`$ for Wolf-Rayet winds) and $`A_{}`$ is a constant which describes the density profile of the wind (CL00). This peak corresponds to an optical flash of magnitude $`m_\mathrm{V}12`$ as compared with an $`r^2`$ estimated peak of $`m_\mathrm{V}9`$. Furthermore, the RS emission dies off more rapidly when surrounded by a wind external medium. The ability to detect a RS contribution within early radio observations is then generally reduced for an $`r^2`$ burst. Therefore, after modelling the early afterglows of 991216 and 991208, which are better described with the addition of a RS contribution, we argue that the homogeneous medium solution is preferred. As a consistency check, one can instead assume the lower limits in the value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ given by PK02 and fit for the density of the external medium. By doing so, we find density values that are consistent with those from the FS model, which implies that there is no direct evidence for large scale clumps within the density profile.

If the progenitors are massive stars then there is an analogy to the explosions of core collapse supernovae, for which there is abundant evidence that they interact with the winds from the progenitor stars. In most supernova cases, the radial range that is observed is only out to a few $`10^{17}`$ cm, such that the mass loss characteristics have not changed significantly during the time that mass is supplied to the wind (CL00). The density in the wind depends on the type of progenitor. Red supergiant stars, which are thought to be the progenitors of Type II supernovae, have slow dense winds. Wolf-Rayet stars, which are believed to be the progenitors of Type Ib/c supernovae and possibly of GRBs (e.g. MacFadyen & Woosley 1999), have faster lower density winds. Deceleration due to this wind starts in earnest when about half the initial energy is transferred to the shocked matter, i.e. when it has swept up $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^1`$ times its own rest mass. The typical mass where this happens is $`M_{\mathrm{ej}}=E/(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0^2c^2)5\times 10^6E_{53}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{0,2}^2M_{}`$ (Mészáros & Rees 1993).

Figure 11 shows the (isotropic equivalent) swept up mass as a function of radius derived from our $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ estimates. It should be noted, however, that the afterglows sample a region $`10^{17}`$ cm ($`0.03`$ pc) in size. Depending upon the wind history of a Wolf-Rayet star during its last few centuries, the density structure in this region could be quite complicated as the star enters advanced burning stages unlike those in any Wolf-Rayet star observed so far (the uncertainty in the evolution of massive stars leaves open the possibility of interaction with denser material at early times; see e.g. Ramirez-Ruiz et al. 2001). Still, there is no obvious way for the ejected mass at $`10^{17}`$ cm to be much lower than about $`10^5M_{}`$ (assuming $`\dot{M}=10^6M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ and $`v_w10^3\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$; see dashed line in Fig. 11). The low swept up mass inferred is thus problematic for the collapsar model. This has lead to the suggestion that the fireball expansion may be taking place inside the constant density medium that is expected downstream from the termination shock of the massive star wind (Wijers 2001; see also Scalo & Wheeler 2001). The radius of the wind termination shock at the inner edge of the wind bubble can be found by balancing the wind ram pressure with the post-shock cavity pressure. The termination shock radius, $`R_t`$, is thus given by

$$R_t=0.4\dot{M}_6^{3/10}v_{w,3}^{1/10}n_{0,3}^{3/10}t_6^{2/5}\mathrm{pc}$$
(14)
where $`t_6`$ is the lifetime of the star in Myr and $`n_0`$ is the interstellar gas density. The density in the uniform shocked wind region, $`n_{\mathrm{sw}}`$, at late times is given by

$$n_{\mathrm{sw}}3\dot{M}\frac{t}{4\pi R_t^3m_p}=0.06\dot{M}_6^{4/5}n_{0,3}^{3/5}v_{w,3}^{6/5}t_6^{4/5}\mathrm{cm}^3,$$
(15)
which shows that even if the progenitor star is embedded in a dense molecular cloud the observed blast wave can propagate in a low-density, uniform medium (Wijers 2001). The mass within the $`1/r^2`$ wind, $`M_t`$, is

$$M_t3\times 10^4\dot{M}_6^{13/10}v_{w,3}^{9/10}n_{0,3}^{3/10}t_6^{2/5}M_{}.$$
(16)
Comparison with estimates in Figure 11 show that if the wind is especially weak (i.e. $`\dot{M}10^6M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$) or the surrounding pressure is high ($`n_0>10^3`$), $`R_t`$ falls within the range of the relativistic expansion. Considering the radial requirements relevant to our sample, we conclude that this applies to most cases (see Table 2). Models and observations of Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars, however, show that the swept-up shell of a red supergiant material at the outer radius is at a distance $`3`$ pc from the star (Garcia-Segura et al. 1996). This radius is sufficiently large that the interaction with the free $`1/r^2`$ wind is expected over the typical period of observation of afterglows. The calculations above demonstrate that a blast wave expanding into a wind bubble only works for massive stars with relatively low mass winds ($`10^6M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$) and/or embedded in dense molecular clouds $`n_010^3\mathrm{cm}^3`$.

Although the interstellar and wind models are the two main types of environments considered for afterglows, there is a different scenario involving a massive star in which the supernova explosion occurs before the GRB (e.g. Vietri & Stella 1998; Dado et al. 2002; Konigl & Granot 2002; Guetta & Granot 2002). The supernova would expand into the progenitor wind, creating a complex circumburst region in the inner part of the wind. Konigl & Granot (2002) have recently shown, for the case of a pulsar-wind bubble, that the shocked wind has a roughly uniform density, similar to that found in the normal interstellar medium.

## 6 Discussion

Accepting the inference that the radio flares arise from the reverse shock, we place constraints on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$, $`g`$, and hence on the density profile of the medium in the immediate vicinity of bursts 980519, 990123, 990510, 991208, 991216, and 000418. Unlike the continuous forward shock, the hydrodynamic evolution of the reverse-shocked ejecta is more sensitive. As we demonstrated, the temperature of the reverse-shocked fluid is found to be non-relativistic for most of these bursts. The hydrodynamics of the cold shocked ejecta is very different from that of the hot ejecta which is described by the BM76 solution. Surprisingly, both cases predict rather similar light curves, with decay laws that vary in relatively narrow ranges. Hence, it is unlikely that the non-detection of radio flares is linked to the relativistic regime of their reverse shock. As argued above, the detection of such flares, or firm upper limits, would play an important role in discriminating between cold and hot shell evolution.

Moreover, the strong dependence of the peak time of this RS emission on the bulk Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ provides a means to measure this elusive parameter. Indeed, we find the fit quality of the FS + RS model to be most sensitive to the parameter value of $`t_{\mathrm{peak}}`$. Our $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ estimates are found to typically lie between 100 and 10<sup>3</sup>, well above the lower limits derived from the requirement that gamma-ray bursts be optically thin to high-energy photons (see LS01). Constrained loosely by equation 1, the peak time is predicted to have a lower limit comparable to the light-width of the shell. Unfortunately, the shell width can only be approximated based on the duration of the prompt $`\gamma `$-ray emission, and consequently the lower limit on $`t_{\mathrm{peak}}`$ involves a significant degree of uncertainty in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$. For this sample of bursts, the $`t_{\mathrm{peak}}`$ values are constrained to a large distribution between 1 and 100 seconds. An increase in the detection efficiency for RS flares and flashes will allow $`t_{\mathrm{peak}}`$ to be better constrained. Although large localisation errors plague attempts at early ($`t<1`$ day) radio observations, we have shown that signatures of the radio flare may still be detectable (on top on the FS emission) at times significantly after 1 day. Therefore, we promote the use of this constraining method in cases where a late-time radio flare component would otherwise go unnoticed. Certainly it is true that earlier radio observations are the key to improved flare detection, but until current observational constraints are lifted, we argue that it is sufficient to use observations at $`t>1`$ day and still recover useful RS constraints.

Knowing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$, we have then estimated the (isotropic equivalent) swept up matter at the radius where the afterglow is produced to be $`10^5M_{}`$ (it should be noted that the afterglows sample a region $`0.03`$ pc in size). Provisional upon the density of the interstellar medium, this may be comparable to the wind termination radius; but unless the the wind is especially weak or the surrounding pressure is extraordinary high, the low densities masses inferred here may be problematic for the collapsar model. It is evident that the environment surrounding a massive star at the time of its death is a very opulent one. The complex density structure we see in SN 1987A could be a hint of what exists in some GRBs progenitors – rich behaviour with multiple possible transitions in the observable part of the afterglow. If we see such transitions, they can be fairly constraining on the properties of the progenitors. So far, the only candidate for having shown a shock transition is the flare-up of 970508 one day after the trigger. Due to the deficiency of early data, this interpretation is only one of many allowable. The prompt optical and radio emission from future bursts will give the opportunity of investigating such transitions in detail.

In summary, we show the potential of modelling early radio afterglow observations in an attempt to understand the physics of the RS. By placing constraints on the properties of GRB shocks we hope to enable improved observational strategies for future flash and flare detections. We show that although current RS theory predicts a detectable radio flare component for a wide range of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and $`g`$ parameter values, it appears to be observationally supported for only some GRBs. As the sample of well-observed GRB afterglows increases, this method will become applicable to a larger set of bursts thereby forming a more statistically significant data set. Analysis of a larger set will offer improved diagnostics on both the initial Lorentz factor of the collimated fireball and also the density of the burst immediate environment.

## Acknowledgements

This work was motivated by conversations with and encouragement from A. Panaitescu and P. Kumar. The authors wish to thank E. Berger, A. Blain and D. Frail for helpful comments and discussion. AMS was supported by the NSF GRFP. ER-R thanks CONACYT, SEP and the ORS for support.


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# Modularity of 𝑝-adic Galois representations via 𝑝-adic approximations Dedicated to the memory of my mother Nalini B. Khare 30th August 1936–12th March 2002

## Modularity lifting theorem

In the work of Wiles in \[W\], as completed by Taylor and Wiles in \[TW\], the modularity of many 2-dimensional $`p`$-adic representations of the absolute Galois group $`G_𝐐`$ of $`𝐐`$ was proven assuming that the mod $`p`$ reduction of the representation was irreducible and modular. The proof was via proving the isomorphism of certain deformation and Hecke rings. A more naive approach to proving the modularity of a $`p`$-adic representation, say

$$\rho :G_𝐐GL_2(𝐙_p),$$

assuming that its reduction $`\overline{\rho }`$ is modular, that works directly with $`\rho `$ instead of fitting it into a family (i.e., interpreting it as a point in the spectrum of a deformation ring), and then proving modularity for the family as is done in \[W\] and \[TW\], would be as follows: Starting from the assumption that $`\overline{\rho }`$ is modular prove successively that the mod $`p^n`$ reductions of $`\rho `$ occur in the $`p`$-power torsion of the abelian variety $`J_1(N)`$ for a fixed $`N`$. In this note we give a proof of modularity lifting results in this more direct style. Here like in \[K\] we merely want to present a new method for proving known results, and will illustrate the method by rederiving the following special case of the results proven in \[W\] and \[TW\]. This is not the optimal result that can be obtained by this method: see the end of the note for the statement of some refinements.

###### Theorem 1

(A. Wiles, R. Taylor) Let $`\rho :G_𝐐GL_2(W(k))`$ be a continous representation, with $`W(k)`$ the Witt vectors of a finite field $`k`$ of residue characteristic $`p>5`$.

Assume that the mod $`p`$ reduction $`\overline{\rho }`$ of $`\rho `$ has the following properties:

* $`\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho })`$ is absolutely irreducible,
* $`\overline{\rho }`$ is modular.

Further assume that:

* $`\rho `$ is semistable at all primes,
* $`\rho `$ is of weight 2 at $`p`$ and Barsotti-Tate at $`p`$ if $`\overline{\rho }`$ is finite, flat at $`p`$,
* and that the primes ramified in $`\rho `$ are finitely many and not $`\pm 1`$ mod $`p`$.

Then $`\rho `$ arises from $`S_2(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(N))`$ for some integer $`N`$.

Remarks:

1. The idea of such a proof was proposed in \[K1\], but at that time we could not put it into practise. In \[K1\] we had observed that for many $`\rho `$’s (for examples the ones in the theorem), assuming $`\overline{\rho }`$ is modular one can show that $`\rho _n`$ arises from $`J_1(N(n))`$ for a positive integer $`N(n)`$ that depends on $`n`$. The new observation of the present note is that in many circumstances using this we can deduce (see Proposition 1) that $`\rho _n`$ arises from $`J_1(N)`$ for a fixed $`N`$.

2. By semistable at primes $`qp`$ we simply mean that the restriction to the inertia at $`q`$ should be unipotent, and at $`p`$ semistable of weight 2 we mean that $`\rho `$ at $`p`$ should either be Barsotti-Tate, i.e., arise from a $`p`$-divisible group, or be ordinary and the restriction to the inertia at $`p`$ should be of the form $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\epsilon & \\ 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ with $`\epsilon `$ the $`p`$-adic cyclotomic character. Note that the determinant of such a $`\rho `$ is $`\epsilon `$.

## Proof

The rest of the paper will be occupied with the proof of this theorem. The proof will have 2 steps: We first prove that the reduction mod $`p^n`$ of $`\rho `$, $`\rho _n:G_𝐐GL_2(W_n(k))`$ with $`W_n(k)`$ the Witt vectors of length $`n`$ of $`k`$, arises in the $`p`$-power torsion of $`J_0(Q_n)`$ where $`Q_n`$ is the (square-free) product of a finite set of primes that depends on $`n`$. For this we use the Ramakrishna-lifts or $`R`$-lifts of \[R\], the determination of their limit points in Theorem 1 of \[K1\]. In the second step, we deduce from the first step that $`\rho _n`$ arises from $`J_0(N)`$ for a positive integer $`N`$ independent of $`n`$ (see Proposition 1 below). From this we will deduce the theorem easily.

### Step 1

Let $`S`$ be the set of ramification of $`\overline{\rho }`$. We repeat the following lemma from \[K1\] and its proof for convenience. To explain the notation used, by $`R`$-primes we mean primes $`q`$ that are not $`\pm 1`$ mod $`p`$, unramified for the residual representation $`\overline{\rho }`$ and for which $`\overline{\rho }(\mathrm{Frob}_q)`$ has eigenvalues with ratio $`q^{\pm 1}`$. We say that a finite set of $`R`$-primes $`Q`$ is auxiliary if certain maps on $`H^1`$ and $`H^2`$, namely $`H^1(G_{SQ},\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho }))_{vSQ}H^1(G_v,\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho }))/𝒩_v`$ and $`H^2(G_{SQ},\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho }))_{vSQ}H^2(G_v,\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho }))`$ considered in \[R\] (and which we refer to for the notation used: recall that $`𝒩_v`$ for $`vQ`$ is the mod $`p`$ cotangent space of a smooth quotient of the local deformation ring at $`v`$ which parametrises special lifts) are isomorphisms. These isomorphisms result in the fact that there is a unique lift $`\rho _{SQ}^{Qnew}:G_𝐐GL_2(W(k))`$ which is semistable of weight 2, unramified outside $`SQ`$, minimally ramified at primes in $`S`$, with determinant $`\epsilon `$, and special at primes in $`Q`$ (by special at $`q`$ we mean that the restriction locally at the decomposition group $`D_q`$ at $`q`$ should up to twist be of the form $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\epsilon & \\ 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$: we use this definition even for representations into $`GL_2(R)`$ with $`R`$ a $`W(k)`$-algebra).

###### Lemma 1

Let $`Q_n^{}`$ be any finite set primes that includes the primes of ramification of $`\rho _n`$, such that $`Q_n^{}\backslash S`$ contains only $`R`$-primes and such that $`\rho _n|_{D_q}`$ is special for $`qQ_n^{}\backslash S`$. Then there exists a finite set of primes $`Q_n`$ that contains $`Q_n^{}`$, such that $`\rho _n|_{D_q}`$ is special for $`qQ_n\backslash S`$, $`Q_n\backslash S`$ contains only $`R`$-primes and $`Q_n\backslash S`$ is auxiliary.

Proof: We use \[R\] and Lemma 8 of \[KR\] (that latter being a certain mutual disjointness result for field extensions cut out by $`\rho _n`$ and extensions cut out by elements of $`H^1(G_𝐐,\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho }))`$ and $`H^1(G_𝐐,\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho })^{})`$) to construct an auxiliary set of primes $`V_n`$ such that $`\rho _n|_{D_q}`$ is special for $`qV_n`$. Then as $`Q_n^{}\backslash S`$ contains only $`R`$-primes, it follows from Proposition 1.6 of \[W\] that the kernel and cokernel of the map

$$H^1(G_{SV_nQ_n^{}},\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho }))_{vSV_nQ_n^{}}H^1(G_v,\mathrm{Ad}^0(\overline{\rho }))/𝒩_v$$

have the same cardinality, as the domain and range have the same cardinality. Then using Proposition 10 of \[R\], or Lemma 1.2 of \[T\], and Lemma 8 of \[KR\], we can augment the set $`SV_nQ_n^{}`$ to get a set $`Q_n`$ as in the statement of the lemma.

Remark: We can choose $`Q_n^{}`$ as in the lemma such that $`Q_n^{}`$ is independent of $`n`$ (as $`\rho `$ is ramified at only finitely many primes). But the set $`Q_n`$ that the lemma produces depends much on $`n`$, and can be chosen to be independent of $`n`$ only if $`\rho `$ is itself a $`R`$-lift. Further note that just like the auxiliary primes in \[TW\], the sets $`Q_n`$ have no coherence property in general.

We choose a finite set of primes $`Q_n^{}`$ as in Lemma 1 and use the lemma to complete $`Q_n^{}`$ to a set $`Q_n`$ such that $`Q_n\backslash S`$ is auxiliary and $`\rho _n|_{D_q}`$ is special for $`qQ_n\backslash S`$. Then we claim $`\rho _{Q_n}^{Q_n\backslash Snew}\rho `$ mod $`p^n`$. The claim is true, as the set $`Q_n\backslash S`$ being auxiliary, there is a unique representation $`G_𝐐GL_2(W(k)/(p^n))`$ (with determinant $`\epsilon `$) that is unramified outside $`Q_n`$, minimal at $`S`$ and special at primes of $`Q_n\backslash S`$. (It is of vital importance that $`\rho `$ is $`GL_2(W(k))`$-valued as otherwise we would not be able to invoke the disjointness results that are used in the proof of Lemma 1 (Lemma 8 of \[KR\]).)

Because of the uniqueness alluded to above, it follows from the level-raising results of \[DT\] (see Theorem 1 of \[K\]) that $`\rho _{Q_n}^{Q_n\backslash Snew}`$ arises from $`J_0(Q_n)`$ (where abusively we denote by $`Q_n`$ the product of primes in $`Q_n`$), and hence because of the congruence $`\rho _{Q_n}^{Q_n\backslash Snew}\rho `$ mod $`p^n`$, we deduce that $`\rho _n`$ arises from (i.e., is isomorphic as a $`G_𝐐`$-module to a submodule of) the $`p`$-power torsion of $`J_0(Q_n)`$ and for primes $`r`$ prime to $`Q_n`$, $`T_r`$ acts on $`\rho _n`$ via $`\mathrm{tr}(\rho (\mathrm{Frob}_r))`$.

Remark: Its worth noting that in the proof above the property of auxiliary sets $`Q`$ that gets used is that $`R_{SQ}^{Qnew}`$ is a (possibly finite) quotient of $`W(k)`$. Thus it is the uniqueness of lifts with given local properties rather than their existence which is crucial for the work here (as also in \[K\]).

### Step 2

Let $`W_n`$ be the subset of $`Q_n`$ at which $`\rho _n`$ is unramified (note that the set $`Q_n\backslash W_n`$ is independent of $`n`$ for $`n>>0`$ as $`\rho `$ is finitely ramified). Then we have the proposition:

###### Proposition 1

$`\rho _n`$ arises from the $`W_n`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$, and furthermore all the Hecke operators $`T_r`$, for $`r`$ a prime not dividing $`Q_n`$, act on $`\rho _n`$ by $`\mathrm{tr}(\rho _n(\mathrm{Frob}_r))`$.

Proof: This is a simple application of Mazur’s principle (see Section 8 of \[Ri\]). The principle relies on the fact that on torsion points of Jacobians of modular curves with semistable reduction at a prime $`q`$, which are unramified at $`q`$ and which reduce to lie in the “toric part” of the reduction mod $`q`$ of these Jacobians, the Frobenius action is constrained. Namely, on the “toric part” the Frobenius $`\mathrm{Frob}_q`$ acts by $`w_qq`$ where $`w_q`$ is the Atkin-Lehner involution. We flesh this out this below.

Consider a prime $`qW_n`$. Then decompose $`\rho _n|_{D_q}`$ (which is unramified by hypothesis) into $`W(k)/p^nW(k)/p^n`$ where on the first copy $`\mathrm{Frob}_q`$ acts by a scalar that is not $`\pm q`$: this is possible as $`q^2`$ is not 1 mod $`p`$ and $`\rho _n`$ is special at $`q`$. Let $`e_n`$ be a generator for the first summand. We would like to prove that $`\rho _n`$ occurs in the $`q`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$. Note that using irreducibility of $`\overline{\rho }`$, Burnside’s lemma gives that $`\overline{\rho }(k[G_𝐐])=M_2(k)`$ and hence by Nakayama’s lemma $`\rho _n(W_n(k)[G_𝐐])=M_2(W_n(k))`$. Thus using the fact that the $`q`$-old subvariety is stable under the Galois and Hecke action, the fact that $`\rho _n`$ occurs in the $`q`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$ is implied by the claim that $`e_n`$ is contained in the $`q`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$. Let $`𝒥`$ be the Néron model at $`q`$ of $`J_0(Q_n)`$. Note that as $`\rho _n`$ is unramified at $`q`$ it maps injectively to $`𝒥_{/𝐅_q}(\overline{𝐅_q})`$ under the reduction map. Now if the claim were false, as the group of connected components $`𝒥`$ is Eisenstein (see loc. cit.), we would deduce that the reduction of $`e_n`$ in $`𝒥_{/𝐅_q}^0(\overline{𝐅}_q)`$ maps non-trivially (and hence its image has order divisible by $`p`$) to the $`\overline{𝐅_q}`$-points of the torus which is the quotient of $`𝒥_{/𝐅_q}^0`$ by the image of the $`q`$-old subvariety (in characteristic $`q`$). But as we recalled above, it is well known (see loc. cit.) that $`\mathrm{Frob}_q`$ acts on the $`\overline{𝐅}_q`$-valued points of this toric quotient (isogenous to the torus $`T`$ of $`𝒥_{𝐅_q}^0`$, the latter being a semiabelian variety that is an extension of $`J_0(\frac{Q_n}{q})_{/𝐅_q}^2`$ by $`T`$) by $`w_qq`$ which gives the contradiction that $`q^2`$ is 1 mod $`p`$. This contradiction proves the claim. Now taking another prime $`q^{}W_n`$ and working within the $`q`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$, by the same argument we see that $`\rho _n`$ occurs in the $`\{q,q^{}\}`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$, and eventually that $`\rho _n`$ occurs in the $`W_n`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$. Furthermore by inspection the last part of the proposition is also clear.

###### Corollary 1

$`\rho _n`$ arises from $`J_0(N)`$ for a fixed integer $`N`$ (independent of $`n`$).

Proof: This follows from the proposition from the irreducibility of $`\overline{\rho }`$ and the fact that the kernel of the degeneracy map from several copies of $`J_0(\frac{Q_n}{W_n})`$ to $`J_0(Q_n)`$ is Eisenstein (see \[Ri1\]), where by abuse we denote by $`W_n`$ the product of the primes in $`W_n`$.

### $`\rho `$ is modular

There are various ways by which we can deduce the theorem from the corollary and we choose the following. From the corollary, we see that $`\rho _n`$ occurs in $`J_0(N)`$ for a fixed $`N`$, such that for all $`r`$ not a divisor of any of the $`Q_n`$’s, the Hecke operator $`T_r`$ acts on $`\rho _n`$ via the reduction mod $`p^n`$ of the scalar (that is really an endomorphism!) $`\mathrm{tr}(\rho (\mathrm{Frob}_r))`$. By Proposition 1 of \[K1\], which proves that the density of primes that ramify in any element of a converging sequence of residually absolutely irreducible $`p`$-adic Galois representations is 0, we see that the set consisting of all prime divisors of all of the $`Q_n`$’s has density 0. From this we deduce that for a density 1 set of primes $`r`$ there is a normalised newform $`f`$ in $`S_2(\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(N))`$ such that $`a_r(f)=\mathrm{tr}(\rho (\mathrm{Frob}_r))`$: this is because the intersection of the kernels of $`T_r\mathrm{tr}(\rho (\mathrm{Frob}_r))`$ (for such primes $`r`$) acting on the $`p`$-primary torsion group of $`J_0(N)`$ has unbounded exponent (this shows that we could work systematically with the $`W_n`$-old subvariety of $`J_0(Q_n)`$ and thus only use the proposition above instead of the corollary). Hence by the Cebotarev density theorem $`\rho `$ arises from $`f`$ concluding the proof of the theorem.

Remarks:

1. In \[K\], the $`R`$-lifts of \[R\] were used to give new proofs of modularity theorems that did not use TW systems but nevertheless generally relied on the set-up in \[W\] of comparing deformation and Hecke rings and the numerical criterion for isomorphisms of complete intersections of \[W\].

2. By cutting the Jacobians we work with into pieces according to the action of the Atkin-Lehner involutions we can make the proof of Proposition 1 work when the prime $`q`$ is not 1 mod $`p`$.

3. While the theorem makes many hypotheses on $`\rho `$ the one that is most vital for the method to work, besides the usual hypotheses that are present in \[W\] et al, is that $`\rho `$ is $`W(k)`$-valued. The others are of a more technical nature and perhaps some of them could be eased after some further work. (Note that for a $`GL_2`$-type abelian variety the corresponding $`p`$-adic representation is defined over unramified extensions of $`𝐐_p`$ for almost all primes $`\mathrm{}`$.) As far as the ramification hypotheses on $`\rho `$ go these can certainly be relaxed: for instance using the refinement of the result of \[R\] in \[T\], and the methods here, we can obtain the following result.

###### Theorem 2

Let $`\overline{\rho }:G_𝐐GL_2(k)`$ be a continous, odd representation, with $`k`$ a finite field of characteristic bigger than 3, such that $`Ad^0(\overline{\rho })`$ is irreducible. Assume that $`\overline{\rho }`$ is modular, and at $`p`$ is up to twist neither the trivial representation nor unramified with image of order divisible by $`p`$.

Let $`\rho :G_𝐐GL_2(W(k))`$ be a continuous lift of $`\overline{\rho }`$ that has the following properties:

* $`\rho `$ is minimally ramified at the primes of ramification $`\mathrm{Ram}(\overline{\rho })`$ of $`\overline{\rho }`$,
* $`\rho `$ is of weight 2 at $`p`$, and Barsotti-Tate at $`p`$ if $`\overline{\rho }`$ is finite, flat at $`p`$,
* the set of primes $`\mathrm{Ram}(\rho )`$ ramified in $`\rho `$ is finite,
* $`\rho `$ is semistable at all the primes of $`\mathrm{Ram}(\rho )\backslash \mathrm{Ram}(\overline{\rho })`$,
* and for the primes $`q`$ in $`\mathrm{Ram}(\rho )`$ that are not in $`\mathrm{Ram}(\overline{\rho })`$, $`\overline{\rho }|_{D_q}`$ is not a scalar.

Then $`\rho `$ arises from a newform of weight 2.

It will be of interest to have a less restrictive theorem accessible by the methods of this paper, for instance be able to treat (many) 3-adic representations. Conditions ensuring minimality of ramification of $`\rho `$ at $`\mathrm{Ram}(\overline{\rho })p`$ seem essential.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Srinath Baba for a conversation in May, 2002 in Montreal which prompted me to think again of the idea of \[K1\] after a lapse of 2 years.

## References

\[DT\] Diamond, F., Taylor, R., Lifting modular mod $`l`$ representations, Duke Math. J. 74 (1994), no. 2, 253–269.

\[K\] Khare, C., On isomorphisms between deformation rings and Hecke rings, preprint available at http://www.math.utah.edu/~shekhar/papers.html

\[K1\] Khare, C., Limits of residually irreducible $`p`$-adic Galois representations,to appear in Proc. of the AMS, available at http://www.math.utah.edu/~shekhar/papers.html

\[KR\] Khare, C., Ramakrishna, R., Finiteness of Selmer groups and deformation rings, preprint available at http://www.math.utah.edu/~shekhar/papers.html

\[Ri\] Ribet, K., Report on mod $`\mathrm{}`$ representations of $`\mathrm{Gal}(\overline{𝐐}/𝐐)`$, in Motives, Proc. Sympos. Pure Math. 55, Part 2 (1994), 639–676.

\[Ri1\] Ribet, K., Congruence relations between modular forms, Proc. International Cong. of Math. (1983), pp 503–514.

\[R\] Ramakrishna, R., Deforming Galois representations and the conjectures of Serre and Fontaine-Mazur, to appear in Annals of Math.

\[T\] Taylor, R., On icosahedral Artin representations II, to appear in American J of Math.

\[TW\] Taylor, R., Wiles, A., Ring-theoretic properties of certain Hecke algebras, Ann. of Math. (2) 141 (1995), 553–572.

\[W\] Wiles, A., Modular elliptic curves and Fermat’s last theorem, Ann. of Math. 141 (1995), 443–551.

Address of the author: Dept of Math, Univ of Utah, 155 S 1400 E, Salt lake City, UT 84112. e-mail address: shekhar@math.utah.edu

School of Mathematics, TIFR, Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai 400 005, INDIA. e-mail addresses: shekhar@math.tifr.res.in


text:
# The afterglow of GRB 021004: surfing on density waves

## 1 Introduction

On the 4th of October 2002 at 12:06:13 UT, HETE II detected a burst of $``$100 s duration (Shirasaki et al. 2002) with a 7–400 keV fluence of $`3.2\times 10^5`$ erg cm-2 (Lamb et al. 2002). The fast accurate localization allowed the robotic telescope Oschin/NEAT to detect the optical afterglow (OA) $``$9 minutes after the trigger (Fox 2002), at the level of $`R=15.52`$. Observations performed earlier by Torii et al. (2002) yielded upper limits around $`R13.6`$, $``$3.5 minutes after the trigger. The prompt OA identification allowed a very dense sampling of its light curve at early times (see the references listed in the caption of Fig. 1), and spectroscopic observations at medium to high resolution (Matheson et al. 2002; Møller et al. 2002; Fox et al. 2002; Anupama et al. 2002; Eracleous et al. 2002; Chornock & Filippenko 2002; Mirabal et al. 2002b; Sahu et al. 2002c; Salamanca et al. 2002; Djorgovski et al. 2002; Savaglio et al. 2002). The spectra revealed an emission line interpreted as Ly-$`\alpha `$ at $`z=2.328`$ and several absorption lines at slightly different redshifts, corresponding to velocity differences up to 3000–4000 km s-1, suggesting that the absorbing material could be either a clumpy wind ejected by a massive star progenitor or a clumpy remnant of a precursor supernova explosion (Salamanca et al. 2002; Mirabal et al. 2002b). The X-ray afterglow (XA), observed by Chandra (Sako & Harrison 2002) decays in time as $`t^{1\pm 0.2}`$ with an average flux of $`4.3\times 10^{13}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. A preliminary spectral analysis shows no distinct features.

The peculiarity of this OA is the presence of a major rebrightening, with a rise time $`t_{\mathrm{rise}}t_{\mathrm{start}}`$ where $`t_{\mathrm{start}}`$ is the moment in which the rebrightening starts (see the central panel of Fig. 1). The flux then reconnects to the extrapolation of the early time observations for $`15\stackrel{<}{}t\stackrel{<}{}100`$ hours after the GRB. In this time span, the lightcurve shows at least one (maybe two) additional bumps, but with smaller contrast. Such a behavior is unprecedented and is not due to a calibration problem (Henden 2002b).

In the lightcurve of GRB 970508, a major rebrightening was observed from the optical to the X-rays (Galama et al. 1998; Piro et al. 1998); in this case, however, after the rebrightening the flux remained larger than the extrapolation of the early time data and no additional feature was detected for a long time. Such a behavior was interpreted as due to the impact of a late shell of the fireball that gave additional energy to the forward shock (Panaitescu et al. 1998). In the case of GRB 000301C an achromatic rebrightening was observed. It had a very small time scale compared to the time at which it took place and was consequently interpreted as due to a micro-lensing effect (Loeb & Perna 1998; Garnavich et al. 2000).

In this Letter we propose that the rebrightenings observed in the lightcurve of GRB 021004 are the result of the interaction of the fireball with density enhancements (and possibly gaps) in the surrounding medium (Wang & Loeb 2000; Dai & Lu 2002). These inhomogeneities may either be in the form of spherical shells – possibly due to instabilities in the wind ejection history of the progenitor star – or of clumps and filaments – possibly associated to a cooling supernova remnant (SNR). This latter interpretation seems to be corroborated by multiwavelength photometry and spectroscopy.

## 2 The model

We applied a numerical code to compute the lightcurve. The code takes fully into account the light travel-time effects, and assumes standard synchrotron emission equations to compute the comoving frame intensity (Panaitescu & Kumar 2000; Granot & Sari 2002). The fireball dynamics in a non uniform medium is treated by a numerical integration of the energy and momentum conservation equations (Rhoads 1999; Kumar & Panaitescu 2000), with the possibility of adding a reverse shock if a large density contrast is present.

The code assumes spherical symmetry for the environment properties and therefore we can model only radial inhomogeneities in the external medium. The results can be extended to a clumpy geometry with simple considerations (see § 3). We did not include the detailed treatment of the fireball impact (Dai & Lu 2002) since the transient features that are predicted have a time scale much smaller than that due to the curvature of the fireball and are therefore smeared out by the integration on the equal arrival time surface.

When the fireball impacts on an overdensity, it goes through a transient phase, in which the flux increases sharply, relaxing asymptotically to the solution for an unperturbed medium with the higher density (Sari & Piran 1995). The effect of the interaction depends on the spectral range, on the radial dependence of the average density (wind or interstellar medium, hereafter ISM) and on the cooling regime of the electrons. Since the transitory increase is smeared out, the increase in the flux can be estimated with the asymptotic solution. In a uniform density ISM for the slow cooling electron regime, an observation at a frequency above the cooling break will be insensitive to the density variation, while an observation between the peak (in $`F_\nu `$ vs $`\nu `$) and the cooling frequency will yield a flux increase $`F_1/F_0(n_1/n_0)^{1/2}`$, where the subscripts 0 and 1 refer to the smaller and larger densities, respectively. In a wind environment, the same observation would depend linearly on the density contrast. In the case of fast cooling electrons any observation above the peak frequency will be insensitive on the density, both for the ISM and wind environments. In the radio band, the behavior can be even more complicated, since below the self-absorption break the flux will decrease in response to a density increase, while above the self-absorption the flux will increase. Finally, the situation can be made even more complicated by the fact that the break frequencies are shifted by the overdensity and may cross the observational band during the rebrightening.

As mentioned above, if the fireball bumps up against a density jump, a reflected (as well as a forward) shock can be generated, which propagates back into the hot relativistic shell. Its capability of modifying the fireball dynamics depends on the density contrast $`n_1/n_0`$. If $`n_1/n_0>250`$ the bulk Lorentz factor of the reverse shocked hot shell is significantly ($`0.3`$) lower than that of the unshocked hot shell (at a fixed radius), since the relative Lorentz factor of the two shells is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{rel}}>2`$. Therefore such a relativistic reverse shock substantially slows down the incoming fireball, converting most of the initial kinetic energy into internal energy. Its contribution to the emission must be taken into account. This is not the case with GRB 021004: the fireball encounters smaller density contrasts (see below and the left panels of Figs. 1 and 2) and the hot shell continues its run with an asymptotically almost unchanged Lorentz factor. Therefore in the following we will neglect any contribution from the reverse shock emission.

## 3 Results

Figures 1 and 2 show our model in the cases of an ISM and wind environment, respectively. Let us first discuss the wind case in Fig. 2, which we consider less likely.

As discussed above, a requirement in order to observe a rebrightening in a given band ($`R`$ in our case) is that the electrons must be in the slow cooling regime and the band must lie between the peak and cooling frequencies. Such a constraint is easily fulfilled in a wind environment, since the cooling frequency increases with time. Under these conditions, the lightcurve should decay as a power law with an index111This relation holds if $`p<2`$ (Dai & Cheng 2001). We use it since the $`p>2`$ relation $`\delta _w=(3p1)/4`$ yields inconsistently $`p=1.35`$. $`\delta _w=(p+8)/8`$ where $`p`$ is the power-law index of the electron distribution \[$`n(\gamma )\gamma ^p`$\] and $`\delta _w`$ is defined through $`F(t)t^\delta `$. The fitted lightcurve decay is $`\delta 0.75`$, which would imply an unphysical distribution with $`p<0`$. In addition (see Fig. 2) the density enhancements take place at a fairly large distance from the progenitor star, when the wind density is very small ($`n0.3`$ cm-3). In these conditions, a more complicated density structure, due to the interaction of the wind with the ISM, would be expected (Ramirez-Ruiz et al. 2001).

We consider the case of a uniform environment more likely. In this case, the relation between the temporal decay of the OA and the electron distribution is $`\delta _{\mathrm{ISM}}=3(p1)/4`$, yielding $`p2`$. This value is theoretically acceptable, and is comparable to the values derived in other afterglows (Panaitescu & Kumar 2002). Moreover, it is consistent with the X-ray spectrum and temporal decay detected by Chandra at later times (Sako & Harrison 2002), if the X-ray band lies above the cooling frequency. Again, this is usual in observed XAs (see e.g. GRB 010222, in’t Zand et al. 2002). The required density contrast to explain the bump is: $`n_1/n_08.5`$ (Fig. 1).

The density of the ISM and the other afterglow parameters can be constrained by requiring that the optical $`R`$ band lies between the peak and cooling frequencies and that the OA flux is consistent with observations. Such a procedure yields a moderately low density, $`n1`$ cm-3, of the uniform part of the environment. For the fit shown in Fig. 1 we also assumed an electron energy fraction $`ϵ_e=0.01`$, a magnetic field energy fraction $`ϵ_B=0.001`$, and an efficiency of converting the kinetic energy of the fireball into photons during the prompt phase of $`\eta =5\%`$. It should be emphasized, however, that modeling with the standard afterglow theory is sensitive to some simplistic assumptions about the shock physics and about the magnetic field generation mechanisms (see, e.g., Rossi & Rees 2002). Due to the lack of a complete broad-band coverage of the lightcurve, a larger density could be envisaged. A robust upper limit to the average density can however be set by considering that a non-relativistic transition was not observed several days after the explosion. This yields $`n10^6`$ cm-3. It should also be mentioned that, even though all the magnitudes are corrected for the comparison star discussed by Henden (2002b), the data we are attempting to model have been taken with different telescopes and therefore absolute values and errors should be taken with caution. In addition, significant fast variability was detected (Halpern et al. 2002a). For these reasons we did not attempt to perform a formal fit to the data set, but rather to reproduce its general behavior. We also did not try to model the very small time scale variability of the lightcurve, which may be produced by small scale ISM turbulence as in GRB 011211 (Holland et al. 2002a).

What can be safely concluded from the observed rise time is that the overdensity lays at a distance $`R5\times 10^{17}(E_{54}/n)^{1/4}`$ cm from the explosion centre, a value that is fairly independent of the assumed density. Interestingly, the value of the Lorentz factor at the beginning of the interaction is even more robustly constrained, being $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_150(E_{54}/n)^{1/8}`$. This, together with the fact that we can reproduce the bump shape with a spherical overdensity (we do not see the edges of the clump), allows us to put a lower limit to the angular size of the clump $`\theta _1\stackrel{>}{}1^{}`$. Interestingly, the Gaussian density enhancement we used has a radial width $`\delta R/R=0.04`$, comparable to the inferred lower limit on the angular size. Two more considerations support the idea that the density structure is indeed clumpy rather than made by under and over-dense shells. First, we had to include in the radial density structure an under-dense part, due to the need of reproducing at best the decaying part of the first enhancement. The same behavior can be due to a clump that has an angular size similar to the relativistic beaming of the fireball ($`\theta 1/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$). As soon as the fireball is slowed down by the interaction with the clump, the edges of the clump can be detected, with a corresponding decrease of flux. Secondly, the luminosity ratio of the second (and possibly the third) bump with respect to the underlying power-law is smaller than the contrast of the first bump (see right panel of Fig. 1). Our radial overdensity had therefore to be smaller (see Fig. 1). However, should a clump with the same overdensity and size of the first one be present at a larger distance, it would produce a bump in the lightcurve with a flux increase of a factor $`_21+_1(\mathrm{\Gamma }_2/\mathrm{\Gamma }_1)^2`$, where $`_1`$ is the flux ratio for the main bump and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2<\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ is the Lorentz factor of the fireball at the moment of the interaction with the second clump. This is due to the fact that the second bump would interact with a smaller portion of the visible area of the fireball. The predicted ratio is $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }_1/\mathrm{\Gamma }_2)^27`$ (left panel of Fig. 1), in excellent agreement with the data (right panel of Fig. 1). As a consequence, the lightcurve should evolve to a smooth decay due to (i) the smaller area of the visible fireball that would be affected by the interaction with a clump and (ii) the possibility of interaction with more and more clumps simultaneously.

We therefore conclude that the most likely environment for GRB 021004 is a uniform medium with clumps of density contrast of order 10 and size $`\mathrm{\Delta }R10^{16}`$ cm. Such an environment may be quite typical for relatively young SNRs (Böttcher et al. 2002). This evidence adds to the multiple high velocity absorption systems detected in the optical spectra (Salamanca et al. 2002), suggesting that the explosion of the burst took place within the remnant of a former explosion, likely a SN.

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

We have presented a model to fit the OA of GRB 021004, which is characterized by the presence of bright bumps on top of the usual power-law decay. We suggest that the most likely origin for the bumps is the interaction of the fireball with density clumps, with a density contrast $`n_1/n_210`$ and size $`\mathrm{\Delta }R10^{16}`$ cm. These clumps should lie at a distance of the order of $`5\times 10^{17}`$ cm from the explosion site, even though this number is uncertain due to the lack of a precise measure of the average density of the environment.

One possible alternative to this explanation is the presence of a very narrow and energetic component of the fireball, lying slightly off-axis from the line of sight (Panaietscu et al. 1998). In this case such a bump should be a common feature of all OAs that an unprecedented early monitoring has now disclosed. Such a component, was however not seen in GRB 990123. In addition, the equality of $`t_{\mathrm{start}}`$ with the rise time $`t_{\mathrm{rise}}`$ would be a mere coincidence. It would also be difficult to explain the second (and possible third) rebrightening. Alternatively, the bump may be produced by a neutron decay trail ahead of the external shock (Beloborodov 2002). Again, a single bump would be expected in the simplest case.

Evidence for a clumpy geometry of the medium surrounding the GRB explosion site comes also from the detection, in the optical spectra, of multiple absorption features from intermediate ionization ions (e.g. CIV). The large velocity spacing of $`3000`$ km/s, suggests a clumpy medium outflowing from the explosion site (Mirabal et al. 2002; Salamanca et al. 2002). The possible physical association of the absorbing clouds with those producing the afterglow rebrightenings is tantalizing, even though the former should lie at a larger distance, since all the carbon atoms are completely ionized within a distance $`R\stackrel{>}{}10^{19}`$ cm from the explosion site (a density of $`10^7`$ cm-3 would be required to have recombination of free electrons onto the carbon nuclei in $`1`$ day).

We speculate that the burst exploded within a Crab-like SNR, produced by a supernova that exploded $`10100`$ years before the GRB. Such a time interval is in the upper extreme, yet consistent, with what predicted by the Supranova scenario (Vietri & Stella 1998). This possibility was also suggested to account for the possible detections of X-ray lines (Piro et al. 1999, 2000; Antonelli et al. 2000; Reeves et al. 2002) in the early XA of several GRBs. In those cases, the SN-GRB delay should have been smaller (Lazzati et al. 1999, 2002). Consistently, no X-ray feature is detected in the X-ray spectrum of GRB 021004 (Sako & Harrison 2002) since the remnant is too far from the explosion site and its density too small. Also, the outflow velocity of the SNR inferred for this burst is much smaller than that required in bursts with X-ray features, consistent with the slow-down of the SN ejecta with time. Finally, if this interpretation is correct, the OA of GRB 021004 should not have a SN component in its lightcurve (see, e.g., Bloom et al. 2002), even though such a component would be in any case difficult to detect given the large redshift of the event.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Martin Rees for useful discussions and for critically reading the manuscript. DL and ER acknowledge financial support from the PPARC and the Isaac Newton Fellowship, respectively.


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# Retardation of Gravity in Binary Pulsars

## 1. Introduction

Timing of binary pulsars is one of the most important methods of testing General Relativity both in the weak and strong gravitational field regimes (Manchester & Taylor 1977; Damour & Taylor 1992; Taylor 1994; Kaspi, Taylor,& Ryba 1994; Stairs et al. 1998; Van Straten et al. 2001). Such an opportunity exists because of the possibility to measure in some of the binary pulsars a sufficiently large number of classical and relativistic parameters of the pulsar’s orbital motion. Each of the parameters depends on masses of orbiting stars and orbital characteristics in a different functional way. Consequently, if three or more of these parameters can be measured in addition to five Keplerian parameters (Manchester & Taylor 1977), the overdetermined system of the parameter equations can be used to test the gravitational theory (Damour & Taylor 1992; Kopeikin & Potapov 1994).

Especially important for this test are binary pulsars on the orbits visible nearly edge-on. In such systems masses of orbiting stars can be easily determined by measuring the range, $`r`$, and shape, $`s`$, of the Shapiro time delay (Shapiro 1967; Blandford & Teukolsky 1976) in the propagation of the radio pulses from the pulsar to the observer. Perhaps, the most famous examples of the nearly edge-on binary pulsars are PSR B1855+09 and PSR B1534+12. The sine of the inclination angle $`i`$ of the orbit of PSR B1855+09 to the line of sight makes up a value of about 0.9992 and the range parameter of the Shapiro effect reaches 1.27 $`\mu `$s (Kaspi et al. 1994). The corresponding quantities for PSR B1534+12 are $`\mathrm{sin}i=0.982`$ and $`r=6.7\mu `$s respectively (Stairs et al. 1998).

All binary pulsars emit gravitational waves, a fact which was confirmed with the precision of about $`0.3\%`$ by Joe Taylor and collaborators (Taylor $ Weisberg 1989; Taylor 1994). New achievements in technological development of data acquisition systems and continuous upgrading the largest radio telescopes (Bailes 2002) extend our potential to measure with higher precision the time-of-arrival of pulsar’s radio signals. Therefore, new classic and relativistic effects can be measured in a very near future.

Among them the influence of the velocity-dependent terms in the metric tensor of a binary pulsar on propagation of radio signals from the pulsar to the observer is of a special interest. These terms produce an additional effect in timing formula that reveals itself as a small periodic excess to the range and shape of the Shapiro time delay making it dependence on the orbital phase of the binary system be more complicated function of time. The mathematical properties of the effect under discussion were thoroughly discussed by Kopeikin & Schäfer (1999). Later, Kopeikin (2001) associated this effect with the retarded nature of the Einstein field equations. Thus, the excess to the range and shape of the Shapiro effect can be interpreted as a direct consequence of the fact that gravity propagates with the finite speed that can be actually measured in the nearly edge-on relativistic binary pulsars. This paper is designed primarily for experimenters to give them further insight to the problem of detection of the retardation of gravity in binary pulsars.

## 2. Gravitational Time Delay in Binary Pulsars

In this section we present the gravitational time delay formula which includes, besides of the well known Shapiro’s logarithm, all linear corrections for the velocities of the pulsar and its companion. The original idea of the derivation of the gravitational time delay in the static and spherically symmetric field of a self-gravitating body belongs to Irwin Shapiro (1967). Regarding binary pulsars the Shapiro time delay has been computed by Blandford & Teukolsky (1976) under the assumption that gravitational field is weak and static everywhere. This was actually an unjustified approximation because the pulsar and its companion move around the barycenter of the binary as radio signal from the pulsar propagates towards observer. We have developed (Kopeikin Schäfer 1999; Kopeikin & Mashhoon 2002) a novel theory of propagation of light in time-dependent gravitational fields that allows to treat the relativistic time delay rigorously and account for all effects caused by the non-stationary part of the gravitational field of a binary pulsar, that is to find all relativistic corrections of order $`v/c`$, $`v^2/c^2`$, etc. to the Blandford-Teukolsky formula, where $`v`$ denotes a characteristic velocity of bodies in the binary pulsar and $`c`$ should be understood as the speed of gravity (Kopeikin 2001). Of course, in general relativity the speed of gravity is numerically the same as the speed of light. However, it is the speed of gravity which enters the equation describing the propagation of gravity from moving pulsar and its companion to a radio signal emitted by the pulsar.

The original formula for the gravitational time delay is quite complicated (see Eq. (51) in (Kopeikin & Schäfer 1999) for more detail). It depends on the position of pulsar and its companion at the retarded time taken by gravity to propagate from these bodies to observer (Kopeikin 2001). One can approximate the original formula by making use of the expansion with respect to the small parameter $`v/c`$ so that it assumes the following form (Kopeikin & Schäfer 1999)

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_g=\frac{2Gm_c}{c^3}\left(1\frac{1}{c}𝐤𝐯_c\right)\mathrm{ln}\left[r+𝐤𝐫\frac{1}{c}\left(𝐤\times 𝐯_c\right)\left(𝐤\times 𝐫\right)\right],$$
(1)
where $`𝐤`$ is the unit vector from the pulsar to observer, $`𝐫`$ is the radius-vector from pulsar’s companion to the pulsar, $`r=|𝐫|`$, $`𝐯_c`$ is the velocity of the companion with respect to the barycenter of the binary system, $`\mathrm{"}\mathrm{"}`$ and $`\mathrm{"}\times \mathrm{"}`$ denote the Euclidean scalar and vector products.

## 3. Parametrization of the Gravitational Time Delay

One notices the presence of the relativistic terms of order $`1/c`$ in front of and in the argument of the logarithmic function describing the Shapiro time delay in binary pulsar. Both these corrections are directly related to the effect of propagation of gravity in General Relativity with the finite speed equal to the speed of light. In other alternative theories of gravity these relativistic terms would not have such a simple form. Thus, their measurement give an additional test of general relativity being independent of all previous tests. Measurement of the relativistic terms under discussion is, however, a great challenge for pulsar timing community. The matter is that the additional effects are proportional to the ratio of $`v/c`$ that amounts to magnitude $`10^3`$ in some relativistic binaries. The ratio $`v/c`$ can be larger than $`10^3`$ only in the case of ultra-relativistic binary systems with massive stars and very short orbital periods. Finding such relativistic systems should be conceived as a first-priority task of pulsar searches (Jouteux et al. 2002).

The term in front of the logarithm modulates the range parameter of the Shapiro time delay (see Eq. (5) below). The amplitude of this modulation can reach for the known binary pulsars 10 nanoseconds which is probably too small to detect presently. The relativistic term in the argument of the logarithmic function is more interesting. This term can be important for relativistic binary pulsars with nearly edge-on orbits where it changes the shape parameter of the Shapiro time delay making it dependent on the orbital phase. One can show that Eq. (1) can be reduced to the form looking similar to the Blandford-Teukolsky parametrization of the Shapiro effect. Specifically, after straightforward calculations of the scalar and vector products in Eq. (1) by making use of the Keplerian orbital parametrization of the two-body problem (Klioner & Kopeikin 1994), one has

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_g=2r\mathrm{ln}\left\{1e\mathrm{cos}(u+\epsilon )s\left[\mathrm{sin}\omega (\mathrm{cos}ue)+\sqrt{1e^2}\mathrm{cos}\omega \mathrm{sin}u\right]\right\},$$
(2)
where $`e`$ is the orbital eccentricity of the binary, $`\omega `$ is the argument of the periastron, and $`u`$ is the eccentric anomaly relating to the time of emission, $`T`$, and the instant of the first passage of the pulsar through the periastron, $`T_0`$, by the Kepler transcendental equation

$$ue\mathrm{sin}u=\frac{2\pi }{P_b}\left(TT_0\right).$$
(3)
The other parameters entering Eq. (2) are

$`\epsilon `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{sin}i}}{\displaystyle \frac{x}{P_b}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_p}{m_c}},`$ (4)
$`r`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Gm_c}{c^3}}\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{\epsilon \mathrm{sin}i}{\sqrt{1e^2}}}F(u)\right],`$ (5)
$`s`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{sin}i\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{\epsilon \mathrm{sin}i}{\sqrt{1e^2}}}F(u)\right],`$ (6)
where $`m_p`$ and $`m_c`$ are masses of the pulsar and its companion respectively, $`x=a\mathrm{sin}i/c`$ is the orbital semimajor axis of pulsar’s orbit projected on the line of sight and measured in seconds, and function

$$F(u)=e\mathrm{cos}\omega +\frac{(\mathrm{cos}ue)\mathrm{cos}\omega \sqrt{1e^2}\mathrm{sin}\omega \mathrm{sin}u}{1e\mathrm{cos}u}.$$
(7)
In the case of a nearly circular orbit, when $`e0`$, Eq. (2) is simplified

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_g=\frac{2Gm_c}{c^3}\left(1\epsilon \mathrm{sin}i\mathrm{cos}\varphi \right)\mathrm{ln}\left(1\mathrm{sin}i\mathrm{sin}\varphi \frac{1}{2}\epsilon \mathrm{sin}^2i\mathrm{sin}2\varphi \right),$$
(8)
where $`\varphi =u+\omega `$ is the orbital phase. One notices that the argument of the logarithmic function is modulated by the term having a double orbital frequency.

In Eqs. (4)–(6) parameter $`\epsilon `$ is the new (constant) relativistic parameter and $`r`$ and $`s`$ are the range and shape parameters of the Shapiro time delay. It is worth noting that both of these parameters are no longer constant but depend of the orbital phase. This distorts the amplitude and shape of the logarithmic curve. Measurement of this distortion allows to make a judgment about how fast gravity propagates with respect to electromagnetic waves. We also would like to emphasize that the magnitude of the new effects described in this paper can be large enough only in the binary systems where mass and orbital velocity of pulsar’s companion are reasonably big. The binary can be visible edge-on but if pulsar’s companion is a low-mass star the detection of the retardation of gravity effect is questionable.

Similar study applied to the case of light propagating in the solar system reveals that the retardation of gravity effect can be also detected in the event of a close passage of massive Jupiter near a bright quasar (Kopeikin 2001).

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