Overall Temporal Synchrotron Emissions from Relativistic Jets: Adiabatic and Radiative Breaks

We discuss the afterglow emission from a relativistic jet that is initially in the radiative regime in which the accelerated electrons are fast cooling. We note that such a “semiradiative” jet decelerates faster than an adiabatic jet does. We also take into account the effect of strong inverse-Compton scattering on the cooling frequency in the synchrotron component and therefore on the light curve decay index. We find that there are two kinds of light-curve break for the jet effect. The first is an “adiabatic break” if the electrons become slow cooling before the jet enters a spreading phase, and the second is a “radiative break” which appears on the contrary case. We then show how a relativistic jet evolves dynamically and derive the overall temporal synchrotron emission in both cases, focusing on the change in light curve decay index around the break time. Finally, in view of our results, we rule out two cases for relativistic jets to account for the observed light curve breaks in a few afterglows: (i) an adiabatic jet with strong Compton cooling (Y > 1) and with the cooling frequency νc locating in the observed energy range; (ii) a radiative jet with a significant fraction of total energy occupied by electrons (ǫe ∼ 1).