Cooling waves in pair plasma [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1710.00373


We consider structure and emission properties of a pair plasma fireball that cools due to radiation. At temperatures $T \geq 0.5 m_e c^2$ the cooling takes a form of clearly defined cooling wave, whereby the temperature and pair density experience a sharp drop within a narrow region. The surface temperature, corresponding to the location where the optical depth to infinity reaches unity, never falls much below $0.1 m_e c^2 \approx 50$ keV. The propagation velocity of the cooling wave is much smaller than the speed of light and decreases with increasing bulk temperature.

Read this paper on arXiv…

M. Lyutikov
Tue, 3 Oct 2017
30/63

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