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Collapsar Accretion and the Gamma-Ray Burst X-Ray Light Curve

We present axisymmetric hydrodynamical simulations of the long-term accretion of a rotating GRB progenitor star, a "collapsar," onto the central compact object. The simulations were carried out with the adaptive mesh refinement code FLASH in two spatial dimensions and with an explicit shear viscosity. The evolution of the central accretion rate exhibits phases reminiscent of the long GRB gamma-ray and X-ray light curve, which lends support to the proposal that the luminosity is modulated by the central accretion rate. After a few tens of seconds, an accretion shock sweeps outward through the star. The formation and outward expansion of the accretion shock is accompanied with a sudden and rapid power-law decline in the central accretion rate Mdot ~ t^{-2.8}, which resembles the L_X ~ t^{-3} decline observed in the X-ray light curves. The collapsed, shock-heated stellar envelope settles into a thick, low-mass equatorial disk embedded within a massive, pressure-supported atmosphere. After a few hundred seconds, the inflow of low-angular-momentum material in the axial funnel reverses into an outflow from the surface of the thick disk. Meanwhile, the rapid decline of the accretion rate slows down, or even settles a in steady state with Mdot ~ 5x10^{-5} Msun/s, which resembles the "plateau" phase in the X-ray light curve. While the duration of the "prompt" phase depends on the resolution in our simulations, we provide an analytical model taking into account neutrino losses that estimates the duration to be ~20 s. The model suggests that the steep decline in GRB X-ray light curves is triggered by the circularization of the infalling stellar envelope at radii where the virial temperature is below ~10^{10} K, such that neutrino cooling shuts off and an outward expansion of the accretion shock becomes imminent.