High-efficiency photospheric emission of long-duration gamma-ray burst
  jets: the effect of the viewing angle
  We present the results of a numerical investigation of the spectra and light
curves of the emission from the photospheres of long-duration gamma-ray burst
jets. We confirm that the photospheric emission has high efficiency and we show
that the efficiency increases slightly with the off-axis angle. We show that
the peak frequency of the observed spectrum is proportional to the square root
of the photosphere's luminosity, in agreement with the Amati relation. However,
a quantitative comparison reveals that the thermal peak frequency is too small
for the corresponding total luminosity. As a consequence, the radiation must be
out of thermal equilibrium with the baryons in order to reproduce the
observations. Finally, we show that the spectrum integrated over the emitting
surface is virtually indistinguishable from a Planck law, and therefore an
additional mechanism has to be identified to explain the non-thermal behavior
of the observed spectra at both high and low frequencies.
