Prompt emission in Gamma-ray bursts; Photospheric Radiation from Synchrotron-Like spectra

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous phenomena in the Universe, explosions whoseenergy is generated by supernovae or mergers of dense objects such as neutron stars. The GRBemission is divided into the prompt emission phase characterized by γ-ray radiation and the afterglowof lower energy radiation. The prompt emission phase is still not understood; as of now, there aretwo leading descriptions: the photospheric- and the synchrotron models. The synchrotron model hashad great success in describing GRB spectra, and specifically some of the brightest ones, although notwithout issues such as some observations being at odds with theory. On the other hand, photosphericmodels have had problems too of how to broaden the spectrum in order to explain the observeddata. One explanation for this broadening is that Radiation Mediated Shocks (RMSs) dissipate energybelow the photosphere. In this report, a time resolved spectral analysis of the prompt emission of GRB160625B – a very bright GRB known to produce synchrotron-like emission – is done. Komrad is animplementation of the Kompaneets RMS Approximation (KRA), which is a dissipative photosphericmodel. Komrad is then used to fit a photospheric model to the prompt emission of GRB 160625Bin order to explore whether photospheric models can account for synchrotron-like emission spectra.Great statistical support is found for the photospheric model in comparison to standard GRB fittingfunctions as well as a synchrotron function which is indicative of the photospheric model being able toexplain a synchrotron-like spectra