Merger rate of black hole binaries from globular clusters: Theoretical error bars and comparison to gravitational wave data from GWTC-2

Antonini, Fabio; Gieles, M.

doi:10.1103/physrevd.102.123016

Cited by 70 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 101 publications

(207 reference statements)

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“…Our prescription for estimating the IMBH mass in our population synthesis results gives a mean IMBH mass of about 5×10 3 M and a median mass of about 1.5 × 10 3 M . These estimated masses are consistent with constraints derived from simulations of young massive clusters and semi-analytical estimates for BH growth in dense environments (Antonini et al 2019;Antonini & Gieles 2020;Shi et al 2021). Using the initial stellar cluster mass distribution from Schaerer & Charbonnel (2011) in our population synthesis approach, we found that most of the stellar clusters that aggregate to form the NSC have initial masses between ∼ 10 5.5 to ∼ 10 6.5 M .…”

Section: Imbh Formation and Growth In Stellar Clusterssupporting

confidence: 84%

Formation of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei – I. Delivering seed intermediate-mass black holes in massive stellar clusters

Askar

Davies

Church

2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are found in most galactic nuclei. A significant fraction of these nuclei also contain a nuclear stellar cluster (NSC) surrounding the SMBH. In this paper, we consider the idea that the NSC forms first, from the merger of several stellar clusters that may contain intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). These IMBHs can subsequently grow in the NSC and form an SMBH. We carry out N-body simulations of the simultaneous merger of three stellar clusters to form an NSC, and investigate the outcome of simulated runs containing zero, one, two and three IMBHs. We find that IMBHs can efficiently sink to the centre of the merged cluster. If multiple merging clusters contain an IMBH, we find that an IMBH binary is likely to form and subsequently merge by gravitational wave emission. We show that these mergers are catalyzed by dynamical interactions with surrounding stars, which systematically harden the binary and increase its orbital eccentricity. The seed SMBH will be ejected from the NSC by the recoil kick produced when two IMBHs merge, if their mass ratio q ≳ 0.15. If the seed is ejected then no SMBH will form in the NSC. This is a natural pathway to explain those galactic nuclei that contain an NSC but apparently lack an SMBH, such as M33. However, if an IMBH is retained then it can seed the growth of an SMBH through gas accretion and tidal disruption of stars.

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Section: Imbh Formation and Growth In Stellar Clusterssupporting

confidence: 84%

Formation of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei – I. Delivering seed intermediate-mass black holes in massive stellar clusters

Askar

Davies

Church

2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…By coupling a cluster age distribution model from [55] with the BBH merger delay time distributions gathered from the CMC models, a realistic distribution of dynamical BBH merger times can be assembled. In [46], this method was used to estimate a BBH merger rate of roughly 20 Gpc −3 yr −1 in the local universe (assuming all N; r v ; Z; and R gc values are equally weighted), consistent with similar rate estimates from other recent studies (e.g., [56][57][58]).…”

Section: B Globular Cluster Evolution With Cmcmentioning

confidence: 75%

Joint constraints on the field-cluster mixing fraction, common envelope efficiency, and globular cluster radii from a population of binary hole mergers via deep learning

et al. 2021

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The recent release of the second Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-2) has increased significantly the number of known GW events, enabling unprecedented constraints on formation models of compact binaries. One pressing question is to understand the fraction of binaries originating from different formation channels, such as isolated field formation versus dynamical formation in dense stellar clusters. In this paper, we combine the COSMIC binary population synthesis suite and the CMC code for globular cluster evolution to create a mixture model for black hole binary formation under both formation scenarios. For the first time, these code bodies are combined self-consistently, with CMC itself employing COSMIC to track stellar evolution. We then use a deep-learning enhanced hierarchical Bayesian analysis to continuously sample over and constrain the common envelope efficiency α assumed in COSMIC, the initial cluster virial radius r v adopted in CMC, and the intrinsic mixture fraction f between each channel. Under specific assumptions about other uncertain aspects of isolated binary and globular cluster evolution, we report the median and 90% confidence interval of three physical parameters for the intrinsic population ðf; α; r v Þ ¼ ð0.20 þ0.32 −0.18 ; 2.26 þ2.65 −1.84 ; 2.71 þ0.83 −1.17 Þ. This simultaneous constraint agrees with observed properties of globular clusters in the Milky Way and is an important first step in the pathway toward learning the astrophysics of compact binary formation through GW observations.

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“…Numerous attempts have been made to leverage GW observations for characterizing the branching fractions between these channels or constraining uncertain physical processes governing these channels (Stevenson et al 2015;Rodriguez et al 2016b;Farr et al 2017a,b;Mandel et al 2017;Stevenson et al 2017a;Talbot & Thrane 2017;Vitale et al 2017;Zevin et al 2017;Barrett et al 2018;Taylor & Gerosa 2018;Arca Sedda & Benacquista 2019;Powell et al 2019;Roulet & Zaldarriaga 2019;Wysocki et al 2019;Abbott et al 2020c;Antonini & Gieles 2020a;Arca Sedda et al 2020;Baibhav et al 2020;Bavera et al 2020a;Bouffanais et al 2020;Farmer et al 2020;Fishbach & Holz 2020;Hall et al 2020;Kimball et al 2020a,b;Roulet et al 2020;Safarzadeh 2020;Wong et al 2020Wong et al , 2021Bhagwat et al 2021). However, due to the high complexity and dimensionality of the problem, these studies often restrict themselves to targeting a single channel or a small subset of channels.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways

Zevin

Bavera

Berry

et al. 2021

ApJ

Self Cite

277

268

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The second LIGO-Virgo catalog of gravitational-wave (GW) transients has more than quadrupled the observational sample of binary black holes. We analyze this catalog using a suite of five state-of-the-art binary black hole population models covering a range of isolated and dynamical formation channels and infer branching fractions between channels as well as constraints on uncertain physical processes that impact the observational properties of mergers. Given our set of formation models, we find significant differences between the branching fractions of the underlying and detectable populations, and that the diversity of detections suggests that multiple formation channels are at play. A mixture of channels is strongly preferred over any single channel dominating the detected population: an individual channel does not contribute to more than 70% of the observational sample of binary black holes. We calculate the preference between the natal spin assumptions and common-envelope efficiencies in our models, favoring natal spins of isolated black holes of 0.1, and marginally preferring common-envelope efficiencies of 2.0 while strongly disfavoring highly inefficient common envelopes. We show that it is essential to consider multiple channels when interpreting GW catalogs, as inference on branching fractions and physical prescriptions becomes biased when contributing formation scenarios are not considered or incorrect physical prescriptions are assumed. Although our quantitative results can be affected by uncertain assumptions in model predictions, our methodology is capable of including models with updated theoretical considerations and additional formation channels.

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Merger rate of black hole binaries from globular clusters: Theoretical error bars and comparison to gravitational wave data from GWTC-2

Cited by 70 publications

References 101 publications

Formation of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei – I. Delivering seed intermediate-mass black holes in massive stellar clusters

Formation of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei – I. Delivering seed intermediate-mass black holes in massive stellar clusters

Joint constraints on the field-cluster mixing fraction, common envelope efficiency, and globular cluster radii from a population of binary hole mergers via deep learning

One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways

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