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J. D. Salmonson (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
In this paper I put forward an interpretation of the energy-dependent pulse lag versus peak luminosity relation for gamma-ray burst light curves, recently discovered by Norris et al., as being derived from the kinematics of the source. Specifically, assuming all else being equal among bursts, it is their variation in line-of-sight velocity that is responsible for the reported relationship. This interpretation reduces the chi-squared fit of this relationship for the known bursts by 25 percent. This also suggests a distance estimation scheme. Finally, this interpretation allows one to speculate on whether gamma-ray bursts are jets or isotropic emitters. If they are isotropic, one can estimate the ratio of maximum to minimum lorentz factors of known bursts as being about 100. If gamma-ray bursts are jets, one can estimate the size of their jet opening angles to be about 10 degrees.
This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract W-7405-ENG-48.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: salmonson@llnl.gov