On the formation and evolution of black hole binaries

By P. Podsiadlowski, S. Rappaport, Zhanwen Han. 2002

229 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the results of a systematic study of the formation and evolution of binaries containing black holes and normal-star companions with a wide range of masses. We first reexamine the standard formation scenario for close black hole binaries, where the progenitor system, a binary with at least one massive component, experienced a common-envelope phase and where the spiral-in of the companion in the envelope of the massive star caused the ejection of the envelope. We estimate the formation rates for different companion masses and different assumptions about the common-envelope structure and other model parameters. We find that black hole binaries with intermediate- and high-mass secondaries can form for a wide range of assumptions, while black hole binaries with low-mass secondaries can only form with apparently unrealistic assumptions (in agreement with previous studies). We then present detailed binary evolution sequences for black hole binaries with secondaries of 2 to 17 M(circle dot) and demonstrate that in these systems the black hole can accrete appreciably even if accretion is Eddington-limited (up to 7 M(circle dot) for an initial black hole mass of 10 M(circle dot) ) and that the black holes can be spun up significantly in the process. We discuss the implications of these calculations for well-studied black hole binaries (in particular GRS 1915+105) and ultraluminous X-ray sources of which GRS 1915+105 appears to represent a typical Galactic counterpart. We also present a detailed evolutionary model for Cygnus X-1, a massive black hole binary, which suggests that at present the system is most likely in a wind mass-transfer phase following an earlier Roche-lobe overflow phase. Finally, we discuss how some of the assumptions in the standard model could be relaxed to allow the formation of low-mass, short-period black hole binaries, which appear to be very abundant in nature.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computational Mechanics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1394bf04bd24225673b51b78d8662dadad4a174f

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Citations in the corpus

Rotational mixing in massive binaries - Detached short-period systems (2009, background): “An additional problem is that the most likely outcome of the common envelope phase would be a merger, as the envelopes of massive stars are tightly bound (Podsiadlowski et al. 2003).”
ON THE MAXIMUM MASS OF STELLAR BLACK HOLES (2009, methodology): “Mass transfer via RLOF onto the BH in Cyg X-1 was considered by Podsiadlowski et al. (2003).”
Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “There are many reasons for this, but one particular important issue is that many other codes model the CE phase with a constant envelope structure parameter, λ, although it has been demonstrated that this is a poor approximation (Dewi & Tauris 2000, 2001; Podsiadlowski et al. 2003) – see also Fig.”
The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105 (2006, background): “An evolutionary model of GRS1915 that links this source to the ultraluminous X-ray sources implies the most extreme mass transfer and spin up (Podsiadlowski et al. 2003).”
Post-common-envelope binaries from SDSS. IX: Constraining the common-envelope efficiency (2010, background): “…of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) in our galaxy has been difficult to explain within the CE picture as low-mass companions appear to be unable to unbind the envelope of a massive primary star (Podsiadlowski et al. 2003) and one therefore expects most systems to merge instead of forming a LMXB.”
Formation and evolution of compact binaries in globular clusters – II. Binaries with neutron stars (2007, background): “Perhaps CE in these systems must be described by a much smallerλ parameter, e.g., Podsiadlowski et al. (2003) showed thatλ can be as low as 0.01.”
The Rates of Hypernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts: Implications for Their Progenitors (2004, background): “…et al. (2001) showed that, if a star loses its envelope through a binary interaction soon after its main-sequence phase, its final pre-supernova core structure is dramatically changed and even a 60 M⊙ star may produce a neutron star rather than a black hole (also see Podsiadlowski et al. 2003).”
The Eccentric Kozai-Lidov Effect and Its Applications (2016, background): “This leads to such large eccentricities that will result in either tidal disruption events for stars (Li et al. 2015), or accretion of dark matter particles which may orbit the black hole (Naoz and Silk 2014). standard formation see Podsiadlowski et al. 2003).”
Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2011, methodology): “Binary population synthesis models have been developed and used to address this problem (Podsiadlowski et al. 2003; Rappaport etal.”
X-Ray Properties of Black-Hole Binaries (2006, methodology): “Also, the measured mass distribution for even the small sample featured here is used to constrain models of BH formation and binary evolution (e.g., Fryer & Kalogera 2001; Podsiadlowski et al. 2003).”
Formation and Evolution of Compact-object Binaries in AGN Disks (2019, background): “Due to the rapid hardening expected during the common-envelope phase, the formation of LMXBs is puzzling (Podsiadlowski et al. 2003; Wiktorowicz et al. 2014; Li 2015; Wang et al. 2016).”
Be/X-ray binaries (2011, background): “Using the population synthesis results of Podsiadlowski et al. (2003), which state that binary black holes are most likely to be born in systems with narrow orbits (Porb<∼30 days), the reason for the lack of these systems can be attributed to the difficulty to detecting them.”
A Low-Mass Planet with a Possible Sub-Stellar-Mass Host in Microlensing Event MOA-2007-BLG-192 (2008, background): “The formation of such systems is not understood (Podsiadlowski et al. 2003), but they are extremely rare.”