The Bright Reverse Shock Emission in the Optical Afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts in a Stratified Medium.

The reverse shock (RS) model is generally introduced to interpret the optical afterglows with the rapid rising and decaying, such as the early optical afterglow of GRB 990123 (which is also called the optical flash). In this paper, we collected 11 gamma-ray burst (GRB) early optical afterglows, which have signatures of dominant RS emission. Since the temporal slopes of the optical flashes are determined by both the medium density distribution index k and the electron spectral index p, we apply the RS model of the thin shell case to the optical flashes and determine the ambient medium of the progenitors. We find that the k value is in the range of 0–1.5. The k value in this paper is consistent with the result in Yi et al., where the forward shock model was applied to some onset bumps. However, the method adopted in this paper is only applicable to GRB afterglows with significant sharp rising and decaying RS emission. Our results indicate that the RS model can also be applied to confirm the circumburst medium, further implying that GRBs may have diverse circumburst media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]