If a large amount of energy is suddenly converted into a concentrated burst of (MeV) γ rays, the prolific creation of electron–positron pairs will inhibit the escape of photons until they have been degraded below the pair-production threshold. This sets general constraints on the possible luminosities of rapidly varying γ-ray sources and suggests why the observed γ-ray bursts have an approximately standardized and ‘soft’ spectrum.
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Cavallo et al. (1978) studied this question.