Optical photometry of GRB 021004:: The first month

We present UBVRCIC photometry of the optical afterglow of the gamma-ray burst GRB 021004 taken at the Nordic Optical Telescope between approximately 8 hours and 30 days after the burst. These data are combined with an analysis of the 87 ks Chandra X-ray observations of GRB 021004 taken at a mean epoch of 33 hr after the burst to investigate the nature of this GRB. We find an intrinsic spectral slope at optical wavelengths of beta(UH) = 0.39 +/- 0.12 and an X-ray slope of beta(X) = 0.94 +/- 0.03. There is no evidence for color evolution between 8.5 hr and 5.5 days after the burst. The optical decay becomes steeper approximately 5 days after the burst. This appears to be a gradual break due to the onset of sideways expansion in a collimated outflow. Our data suggest that the extragalactic extinction along the line of sight to the burst is between A(V) approximate to 0.3 and 0.5 and has an extinction law similar to that of the Small Magellanic Cloud. The optical and X-ray data are consistent with a relativistic. reball with the shocked electrons being in the slow cooling regime and having an electron index of p = 1.9 +/- 0.1. The burst occurred in an ambient medium that is homogeneous on scales larger than approximately 1018 cm but inhomogeneous on smaller scales. The mean particle density is similar to what is seen for other bursts (0.1 cm(-3) less than or similar to n less than or similar to 100 cm(-3)). Our results support the idea that the brightening seen at approximately 0.1 days was due to interaction with a clumpy ambient medium within 10(17)-10(18) cm of the progenitor. The agreement between the predicted optical decay and that observed approximately 10 minutes after the burst suggests that the physical mechanism controlling the observed flux at t approximate to 10 minutes is the same as the one operating at t > 0.5 days.