Energy-Dependent Gamma-Ray Burst Peak Durations and Blast-Wave Deceleration

Temporal analyses of the prompt gamma-ray and X-ray light curves of gamma-ray bursts reveal a tendency for the burst pulse time scales to increase with decreasing energy. For an ensemble of BATSE bursts, Fenimore et al. (1995) show that the energy dependence of burst peak durations can be represented by ∆t ∝ E−γ with γ ≃ 0.4– 0.45. This power-law dependence has led to the suggestion that this effect is due to radiative processes, most notably synchrotron cooling of the non-thermal particles which produce the radiation. Here we show that a similar power-law dependence occurs, under certain assumptions, in the context of the blast-wave model and is a consequence of the deceleration of the blast-wave. This effect will obtain whether or not synchrotron cooling is important, but different degrees of cooling will cause variations in the energy dependence of the peak durations. Subject headings: gamma rays: bursts — radiation mechanisms: non-thermal