Waiting in the wings: extended emission GRBs from high latitude emission and jet expansion
Abstract
The process powering extended emission (EE) Gamma Ray-Bursts (GRBs) from compact object mergers is a debated problem due to their observed prompt emission timescales of 10 to 100s, far in excess of the expected accretion timescales following a binary neutron star (BNS) merger. Here, we present an analytical thin shell structured jet model designed to alleviate this tension. We show that a changing jet structure in which early emission is produced by a high Lorentz factor narrow, structured jet and later emission comes from a wider, lower Lorentz factor tophat-like jet can successfully reproduce the EE GRB phenomenology. All emitting shells are powered by a $0.1$ M⊙ accretion torus and launched within a time window of 2s after merger. Spatially-resolved opacity checks confirm that our emission sites remain optically thin, in part due to the spectral softness associated with EE. We present light curves from our model compared to representative EE bursts detected by Swift: GRBs 211211A, 211227A and 060614. While our light curves provide good matches to the data, our spectra do not evolve fast enough when compared to the well-measured spectral evolution observed in GRB 211211A. We discuss an update to the model incorporating inherent spectral evolution in the shells as future work. We also show a parameter exploration of the model and identify a parameter range within which standard short GRB-like light curves could be produced, showcasing the ability of the model to produce short bursts with and without EE.
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BibTeX
@misc{worssam2026waiting,
title = {{Waiting in the wings: extended emission GRBs from high latitude emission and jet expansion}},
author = {Isabelle Worssam and Benjamin P. Gompertz and Hendrik J. van Eerten},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.26910},
eprint = {2609.26910},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26910},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Waiting in the wings: extended emission GRBs from high latitude emission and jet expansion
AU - Isabelle Worssam
AU - Benjamin P. Gompertz
AU - Hendrik J. van Eerten
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.26910
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26910
AB - The process powering extended emission (EE) Gamma Ray-Bursts (GRBs) from compact object mergers is a debated problem due to their observed prompt emission timescales of 10 to 100s, far in excess of the expected accretion timescales following a binary neutron star (BNS) merger. Here, we present an analytical thin shell structured jet model designed to alleviate this tension. We show that a changing jet structure in which early emission is produced by a high Lorentz factor narrow, structured jet and later emission comes from a wider, lower Lorentz factor tophat-like jet can successfully reproduce the EE GRB phenomenology. All emitting shells are powered by a $0.1$ M_⊙ accretion torus and launched within a time window of 2s after merger. Spatially-resolved opacity checks confirm that our emission sites remain optically thin, in part due to the spectral softness associated with EE. We present light curves from our model compared to representative EE bursts detected by Swift: GRBs 211211A, 211227A and 060614. While our light curves provide good matches to the data, our spectra do not evolve fast enough when compared to the well-measured spectral evolution observed in GRB 211211A. We discuss an update to the model incorporating inherent spectral evolution in the shells as future work. We also show a parameter exploration of the model and identify a parameter range within which standard short GRB-like light curves could be produced, showcasing the ability of the model to produce short bursts with and without EE.
ER -