  We report on observations of correlated behavior between the prompt gamma-ray
and optical emission from GRB 080319B, which (i) strongly suggest that they
occurred within the same astrophysical source region and (ii) indicate that
their respective radiation mechanisms were most likely dynamically coupled. Our
preliminary results, based upon a new cross-correlation function (CCF)
methodology for determining the time-resolved spectral lag, are summarized as
follows. First, the evolution in the arrival offset of prompt gamma-ray photon
counts between Swift-BAT 15-25 keV and 50-100 keV energy bands (intrinsic
gamma-ray spectral lag) appears to be anti-correlated with the arrival offset
between prompt 15-350 keV gamma-rays and the optical emission observed by
TORTORA (extrinsic optical/gamma-ray spectral lag), thus effectively
partitioning the burst into two main episodes at ~T+28+/-2 sec. Second, prompt
optical emission is nested within intervals of (a) trivial intrinsic gamma-ray
spectral lag (~T+12+-2 and ~T+50+/-2 sec) with (b) discontinuities in the hard
to soft evolution of the photon index for a power law fit to 15-150 keV
Swift-BAT data (~T+8+/-2 and ~T+48+/-1 sec), both of which coincide with the
rise (~T+10+/-1 sec) and decline (~T+50+/-1 sec) of prompt optical emission.
This potential discovery, robust across heuristic permutations of BAT energy
channels and varying temporal bin resolution, provides the first observational
evidence for an implicit connection between spectral lag and the dynamics of
shocks in the context of canonical fireball phenomenology.
