Theory of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows

I discuss some theoretical expectations for the synchrotron emission from a relativistic blast-wave interacting with the ambient medium, as a model for GRB afterglows, and compare them with observations. An afterglow flux evolving as a power-law in time, a bright optical flash during and after the burst, and light-curve breaks owing to a tight ejecta collimation are the major predictions that were confirmed observationally, but it should be recognized that light-curve decay indices are not correlated with the spectral slopes (as would be expected), optical flashes are quite rare, and jet-breaks harder to find in Swift X-ray afterglows. The slowing of the early optical flux decay rate is accompanied by a spectral evolution, indicating that the emission from ejecta (energized by the reverse shock) is dominant in the optical over that from the forward shock (which energizes the ambient medium) only up to 1 ks. However, a long-lived reverse shock is required to account for the slow radio flux decays observed in many afterglows after similar to 10 day.