High Energy Afterglow from Gamma-ray Bursts

Understand

We calculate the very high energy (sub-GeV to TeV) inverse Compton emission of GRB afterglows.

• We argue that this emission provides a powerful test of the currently accepted afterglow model.
• We focus on two processes: synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission within the afterglow blast wave, and external inverse Compton (EIC) emission which occurs when flare photons (produced by an internal process) pass through the blast wave.
• We show that if our current interpretations of the Swift XRT data are correct, there should be a canonical high energy afterglow emission light curve.