Are local neutron stars the source of gamma ray bursts?
Simon Johnston and Chris Poulton (RCfTA, University of Sydney, Australia)
Abstract We investigate models for the galactic neutron star origin for gamma ray bursts given the current parameters from the BATSE experiment. We specifically consider what our knowledge of the present population of active radio pulsars can tell us about these models. In particular we look at the model of Li and Dermer, which has bursts originating from high velocity, old neutron stars. Although we can reproduce their results, the model is very sensitive to the initial conditions, and their relationship between the high velocity and magnetic fields of neutron stars is not consistent with models of the radio pulsar population. We also consider two-population models and find that we cannot reproduce any two population model consisting of a combination of halo and local bursts in which the local bursts originate from further than 1 kpc. If bursts originate from neutron stars closer than a few hundred pc then they should be seen to repeat, which is not borne out by the experimental data.