2002MNRAS.336..803W

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) may occur within pulsar wind bubbles (PWBs) under a number of scenarios, such as the supranova-like models in which the progenitor pulsar drives a powerful wind shocking against the ambient medium before it comes to death and produces a fireball. We here study the early afterglow emission from GRBs expanding into such a PWB environment. Different from the usual cold GRB external medium, the PWBs consist of a hot electron-positron (e⁺ e^–) medium with typical `thermal' Lorentz factor of the order of γ_w, the Lorentz factor of the pulsar particle wind. After GRB blast waves shock these hot e⁺ e^– pairs, they will emit synchrotron radiation peaking at GeV bands. It is shown that GeV photons suffer negligible absorption by the soft photons radiation field in PWBs. Thus, strong GeV emissions in the early afterglow phases are expected, providing a plausible explanation for the long-duration GeV emission from GRB940217 detected by EGRET. In the future the GLAST detector may have the potential to test this GRB-PWB interaction model.