2013MNRAS.428..845L

Microphysics of weakly magnetized relativistic collisionless shock waves, corroborated by recent high performance numerical simulations, indicates the presence of a microturbulent layer of large magnetic field strength behind the shock front, which must decay beyond some hundreds of skin depths. This paper discusses the dynamics of such microturbulence, borrowing from these same numerical simulations, and calculates the synchrotron signature of a power law of shock accelerated particles. The decaying microturbulent layer is found to leave distinct signatures in the spectro-temporal evolution of the spectrum Fν ∝ t-αν-β of a decelerating blast wave, which are potentially visible in early multiwavelength follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts. This paper also discusses the influence of the evolving microturbulence on the acceleration process, with particular emphasis on the maximal energy of synchrotron afterglow photons, which falls in the GeV range for standard gamma-ray burst parameters. Finally, this paper argues that the evolving microturbulence plays a key role in shaping the spectra of recently observed gamma-ray bursts with extended GeV emission, such as GRB 090510.