Gamma-ray bursts from unstable Poynting-dominated outflows
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Poynting-flux driven outflows from magnetized rotators are a plausible explanation for gamma-ray burst engines. We suggest a new possibility for how such outflows might transfer energy into radiating particles. We argue that, in a region near the rotation axis, the Poynting flux drives non-linearly unstable large-amplitude electromagnetic waves (LAEMW) that ‘break’ at radii where the MHD approximation becomes inapplicable. In the ‘foaming’ (relativistically reconnecting) regions formed during the wave breaks, the random electric fields stochastically accelerate particles to ultrarelativistic energies which then radiate in turbulent electromagnetic fields. The typical energy of the emitted photons is a fraction of the fundamental Compton energy with f ~ 10−3 plus additional boosting due to the bulk motion of the medium. The emission properties are similar to synchrotron radiation, with a typical cooling time ∼10−3 s. During the wave break, the plasma is also bulk accelerated in the outward radial direction and at larger radii can produce afterglows due to interactions with the external medium. The near equipartition fields required by afterglow models may be due to magnetic field regeneration in the outflowing plasma (similar to field generation by LAEMW in laser-plasma interactions) and mixing with the upstream plasma.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".