The Most Ordinary Formation of the Most Unusual Double Black Hole Merger

Belczyński, Krzysztof

doi:10.3847/2041-8213/abcbf1

Cited by 105 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Hence, hierarchical mergers can build up IMBHs and also partially fill the pair instability mass gap between ∼60 and ∼120 M [103][104][105][106][107][108]. For this reason, hierarchical mergers are one of the most likely formation scenarios for GW190521 [109,110], as already explored by several authors ( [111][112][113][114][115][116], but see [55,56,[117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125][126] for other possible scenarios).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Mass and Rate of Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Young, Globular and Nuclear Star Clusters

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hierarchical mergers are one of the distinctive signatures of binary black hole (BBH) formation through dynamical evolution. Here, we present a fast semi-analytic approach to simulate hierarchical mergers in nuclear star clusters (NSCs), globular clusters (GCs) and young star clusters (YSCs). Hierarchical mergers are more common in NSCs than they are in both GCs and YSCs because of the different escape velocity. The mass distribution of hierarchical BBHs strongly depends on the properties of first-generation BBHs, such as their progenitor’s metallicity. In our fiducial model, we form black holes (BHs) with masses up to ∼103 M⊙ in NSCs and up to ∼102 M⊙ in both GCs and YSCs. When escape velocities in excess of 100 km s−1 are considered, BHs with mass >103 M⊙ are allowed to form in NSCs. Hierarchical mergers lead to the formation of BHs in the pair instability mass gap and intermediate-mass BHs, but only in metal-poor environments. The local BBH merger rate in our models ranges from ∼10 to ∼60 Gpc−3 yr−1; hierarchical BBHs in NSCs account for ∼10−2–0.2 Gpc−3 yr−1, with a strong upper limit of ∼10 Gpc−3 yr−1. When comparing our models with the second gravitational-wave transient catalog, we find that multiple formation channels are favored to reproduce the observed BBH population.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Mass and Rate of Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Young, Globular and Nuclear Star Clusters

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…An important future step will be to incorporate the stellar physics embedded in our prescription (Equation ( 5)) into the description of the pollutant population. In addition to second-generation black holes, this population will contain objects with significant postcollapse accretion (van Son et al 2020;Belczynski 2020) and also black holes formed after non-isolated, pre-collapse stellar mergers (Di Carlo et al 2020;Kremer et al 2020;Renzo et al 2020), all of whose mass functions and contributions to the merger rate should eventually be modeled appropriately and independently. Likewise, including primordial black holes (PBHs) will require a different population model (Hütsi et al 2021;De Luca et al 2021).…”

Section: Bhmentioning

confidence: 99%

Find the Gap: Black Hole Population Analysis with an Astrophysically Motivated Mass Function

Baxter

Croon

McDermott

et al. 2021

ApJL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We introduce a novel black hole mass function that realistically models the physics of pair-instability supernovae with a minimal number of parameters. Applying this to all events in the LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 2 (GWTC-2), we detect a peak at. Repeating the analysis without the black holes from the event GW190521, we find this feature at M BHMG = 54 ± 6 M e . These results establish the edge of the anticipated "black hole mass gap" at a value compatible with the expectation from standard stellar structure theory. The mass gap manifests itself as a discontinuity in the mass function and is populated by a distinct, less-abundant population of higher-mass black holes. We find that the primary black hole population scales with power-law index −1.95 ± 0.51 (−1.97 ± 0.44) with (without) GW190521, consistent with models of star formation. Using Bayesian techniques, we establish that our mass function fits a new catalog of black hole masses approximately as well as pre-existing phenomenological mass functions. We also remark on the implications of these results for constraining or discovering new phenomena in nuclear and particle physics. Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Astrophysical black holes (98); Black holes (162); Gravitational waves (678); Particle astrophysics (96); Gravitational wave astronomy (675); Nuclear astrophysics (1129); Stellar evolution (1599); Stellar populations (1622); Population III stars (1285); Helium burning (716)

show abstract

“…individual BHs are prevented from forming by stellar collapse due to pulsational-pair instabilities, which eject large amounts of material from (and potentially destroy) any star with a helium core mass between about 40 M and 130 M (e.g., Woosley 2017). While it is extremely difficult (though not impossible) to describe such systems as the product of isolated stellar evolution (e.g., Farmer et al 2019;Belczynski 2020), these systems can be easily produced in dense star clusters, though either the repeated mergers of BHs (e.g., Rodriguez et al 2018bRodriguez et al , 2019Fragione et al 2020a;Fragione & Silk 2020) or through massive star mergers occurring prior to BH formation (e.g., Di Carlo et al 2019;Kremer et al 2020c;Weatherford et al 2021;González et al 2021).…”

Section: Binary Black Hole Mergers and Gw190521mentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the Cluster Monte Carlo Code

Rodriguez,

Weatherford,

Coughlin

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We describe the public release of the Cluster Monte Carlo Code (CMC) a parallel, star-by-star N -body code for modeling dense star clusters. CMC treats collisional stellar dynamics using Hénon's method, where the cumulative effect of many two-body encounters is statistically reproduced as a single effective encounter between nearest-neighbor particles on a relaxation timescale. The star-by-star approach allows for the inclusion of additional physics, including strong gravitational three-and four-body encounters, two-body tidal and gravitational-wave captures, mass loss in arbitrary galactic tidal fields, and stellar evolution for both single and binary stars. The public release of CMC is pinned directly to the COSMIC population synthesis code, allowing dynamical star cluster simulations and population synthesis studies to be performed using identical assumptions about the stellar physics and initial conditions. As a demonstration, we present two examples of star cluster modeling: first, we perform the largest (N = 10 8 ) star-by-star N -body simulation of a Plummer sphere evolving to core collapse, reproducing the expected self-similar density profile over more than 15 orders of magnitude; second, we generate realistic models for typical globular clusters, and we show that their dynamical evolution can produce significant numbers of black hole mergers with masses greater than those produced from isolated binary evolution (such as GW190521, a recently reported merger with component masses in the pulsational pair-instability mass gap).

show abstract

The Most Ordinary Formation of the Most Unusual Double Black Hole Merger

Cited by 105 publications

References 58 publications

Mass and Rate of Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Young, Globular and Nuclear Star Clusters

Mass and Rate of Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Young, Globular and Nuclear Star Clusters

Find the Gap: Black Hole Population Analysis with an Astrophysically Motivated Mass Function

Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the Cluster Monte Carlo Code

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About