AN-ENERGETIC-BLAST-WAVE-FROM-THE-DECEMBER-27-GIANT-FLARE-OF-THE-SOFT-γ-RAY-REPEATER-1806-20.pdfVIP

Draft version June 10, 2006 A Preprint typeset using L T X style emulateapj v. 04/03/99 E AN ENERGETIC BLAST WAVE FROM THE DECEMBER 27 GIANT FLARE OF THE SOFT γ-RAY REPEATER 1806-20 1 1 2,3 1 2 X. Y. Wang , X. F. Wu , Y. Z. Fan , Z. G. Dai and B. Zhang 1Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China; xywang@nju.edu.cn, xfwu@nju.edu.cn, dzg@nju.edu.cn 2 Department of Physics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA, yzfan@physics.unlv.edu, bzhang@physics.unlv.edu 3 Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China Draft version June 10, 2006 ABSTRACT Recent follow-up observations of the December 27 giant flare of SGR 1806-20 have detected a multiple- frequency radio afterglow from 240 MHz to 8.46 GHz, extending in time from a week to about a month after the flare. The angular size of the source was also measured for the first time. Here we show that this radio afterglow gives the first piece of clear evidence that an energetic blast wave sweeps up its surrounding medium and produces a synchrotron afterglow, the same mechanism as established for gamma-ray burst afterglows. The optical afterglow is expected to be intrinsically as bright as mR ≃ 13 at t 0.1 days after the flare, but very heavy extinction makes t