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Abstract The afterglows of gamma-ray bursts are believed to have originated from a relativistic jet, which is driven by the merger of compact binary objects or the core collapse of massive stars. Some of their jets may consist of two components: a faster (but narrower) jet and a slower (but wider) jet. The light curves produced by the interaction between the two-component jet and the surrounding medium typically exhibit a chromatic break in multiple bands. For GRB 191221B, the optical light curve of the afterglow exhibits a plateau from 33 to 143 s, followed by a steeper decay that is consistent with the characteristics of reverse shock from an arbitrarily magnetized ejecta. The flattening at ∼10 ks exhibits chromaticity relative to the X-ray afterglow. We propose that the two-component jet scenario can explain this observational result: For the X-ray afterglow, the narrow jet forward shock is dominated until ∼10 ks, and then both the narrow and wide components contribute comparable flux from the forward shock. For the optical afterglow, the first 2 ks is dominated by the narrow jet reverse shock emission (the plateau from 33 to 143 s is due to the jet being magnetized). Between 2 and 10 ks, the forward shock of the narrow jet dominates the optical afterglow, then transitions to wide component forward shock dominance, causing a chromatic plateau. For radio afterglow, the data are only presented after 10 5 s, which is dominated by the wide jet forward shock emission.
Chen et al. (2024) studied this question.