Abstract
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are thought to arise when an extremely relativistic outflow of particles from a massive explosion (the nature of which is still unclear) interacts with material surrounding the site of the explosion. Observations of the evolving changes in emission at many wavelengths allow us to investigate the origin of the photons, and so potentially determine the nature of the explosion. Here we report the results of γ-ray, optical, infrared, submillimetre, millimetre and radio observations of the burst GRB990123 and its afterglow. Our interpretation of the data indicates that the initial and afterglow emissions are associated with three distinct regions in the fireball. The peak flux of the afterglow, one day after the burst, has a lower frequency than observed for other bursts; this explains the short-lived radio emission. We suggest that the differences between bursts reflect variations in the magnetic-field strength in the afterglow-emitting regions.
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Acknowledgements
The United Kingdom Infra-Red Telescope is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). Observations at the Wise Observatory are supported by the Basic Science Foundation of the Israeli Academy of Sciences. The JCMT is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the UK PPARC, the Netherlands Organisation for Pure Research, and the National Research Council of Canada. We thank G. Watt, I.Robson, and J. van der Hulst for authorizing the JCMT observations. We also thank P. Meikle, P. Smith, D. Harmer and the KPNO GRB team for their observations, and G. Jacoby for providing BVRI photometric standards. T.J.G. is supported by NFRA, P.M.V. by the NWO Spinoza grant. C.K., D.L.B., K.H. and M.S.B. are supported by NASA.
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Galama, T., Briggs, M., Wijers, R. et al. The effect of magnetic fields on γ-ray bursts inferred from multi-wavelength observations of the burst of 23 January 1999. Nature 398, 394–399 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/18828
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/18828
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