Recent, prolonged gamma-ray burst yields clues to its structure
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.027556
Ars Technica : Detailed images of a recent long-duration gamma-ray burst, GRB 120308A, have shed light on the magnetic fields thought to drive and direct the jets of charged particles that make up GRBs. First notified of the burst by NASA’s Swift spacecraft, Carole Mundell of the UK’s Liverpool John Moores University and colleagues used the Liverpool Telescope to collect thousands of images of the GRB’s afterglow within four minutes of the initial burst. What they found was that between 24% and 32% of the visible light was polarized, the highest value ever recorded for a GRB. Such strong polarization indicates that the magnetic field probably originated near the black hole at the center of the original supernova explosion, rather than being generated by the rapidly moving, charged particles in the jet itself.
