Relativistic blastwaves and synchrotron emission

Relativistic shocks accelerate particles by the first order Fermi mechanism. These particles then emit synchrotron emission in the post shock gas. We have developed a numerical code which integrates the relativistic Euler equations for fluid dynamics with a general equation of state, together with the Liouville equation for the accelerated particles. We present tests of this code and, in addition, we use it to study the gamma ray burst afterglow predicted by the fireball model, along with the hydrodynamics of a relativistic blastwave. We find that, while, broadly speaking, the behaviour of the emission is similar to that already predicted with semi-analytic approaches, the detailed behaviour is somewhat different. The “breaks” in the synchrotron spectrum behave differently with time, and the spectrum above the final break is harder than had previously been expected. These effects are probably due to the incorporation of the geometry of the (spherical) blastwave, along with relativistic beaming and adiabatic cooling of the energetic particles.