On the optical and X-ray afterglows of gamma ray bursts

We severely criticize the consuetudinary analysis of the afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in the conical-ejection fireball scenarios. We argue that, instead, recent observations imply that the long-duration GRBs and their afterglows are produced by highly relativistic jets of cannonballs (CBs) emitted in supernova explosions. The CBs are heated by their collision with the supernova shell. The GRB is the boosted surface radiation the CBs emit as they reach the transparent outskirts of the shell. The exiting CBs further decelerate by sweeping up interstellar matter (ISM). The early afterglow is dominated by thermal bremsstrahlung from the cooling CB, the late afterglow by synchrotron radiation from the ISM electrons swept up by the CBs. We show that this model fits simply and remarkably well all the measured optical afterglows of the 15 GRBs with known redshift. We find that the CBs of GRB 970508 were gravitationally lensed by an intervening star, and moved extremely superluminally for kiloparsecs. The afterglows of the nearest 8 of the known-redshift GRBs show various degrees of evidence for an association with a supernova akin to SN1998bw. In all other cases such an association, even if present, would have been undetectable with the best current photometric sensitivities. This gives strong support to the proposition that most, maybe all, of the long-duration GRBs are associated with supernovae. Though our emphasis is on optical afterglows, we also provide an excellent description of X-ray afterglows.