THE BLACK HOLE MASS DISTRIBUTION IN THE GALAXY

By F. Özel, Dimitrios Psaltis, Ramesh Narayan, J. E. McClintock. 2010

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We use dynamical mass measurements of 16 black holes in transient low-mass X-ray binaries to infer the stellar black hole mass distribution in the parent population. We find that the observations are best described by a narrow mass distribution at 7.8 ± 1.2 M☉. We identify a selection effect related to the choice of targets for optical follow-ups that results in a flux-limited sample. We demonstrate, however, that this selection effect does not introduce a bias in the observed distribution and cannot explain the absence of black holes in the 2–5 M☉ mass range. On the high-mass end, we argue that the rapid decline in the inferred distribution may be the result of the particular evolutionary channel followed by low-mass X-ray binaries. This is consistent with the presence of high-mass black holes in the persistent, high-mass X-ray binary sources. If the paucity of low-mass black holes is caused by a sudden decrease of the supernova explosion energy with increasing progenitor mass, this would have observable implications for ongoing transient surveys that target core-collapse supernovae. Our results also have significant implications for the calculation of event rates from the coalescence of black hole binaries for gravitational wave detectors.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/162df701e8f3e8a823c22b36f7703df5bd628bfb

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Citations in the corpus

Measuring the Progenitor Masses and Dense Circumstellar Material of Type II Supernovae (2017, background): “Therefore the inferred maximum mass for SN II progenitors may or may not explain the observed distribution of Galactic black hole masses (Özel et al. 2010) and the origin of a potential mass gap between neutron stars and black holes (Özel et al. 2012).”
The mass spectrum of compact remnants from the parsec stellar evolution tracks (2015, background): “24 shows that there is a signiﬁcant mass gap between the heaviest NS ( ∼ 2M (cid:4) ) and the lightest BH ( ∼ 12M (cid:4) ), quite larger than the observed one ( ¨Ozel et al. 2010; Farr et al. 2011; Ugliano et al. 2012; Kochanek 2014; Neustroev et al. 2014).”
Implementing a search for aligned-spin neutron star - black hole systems with advanced ground based gravitational wave detectors (2014, background): “[82] Feryal Ozel, Dimitrios Psaltis, Ramesh Narayan, and Jeffrey E.”
Measuring the spins of accreting black holes (2011, background): “GRS 1915+105: a near-extreme Kerr black hole GRS 1915+105 has unique and striking properties that sharply distinguish it from the 50 or so known binaries that are believed to contain a stellar-mass black hole (McClintock et al 2006, Özel et al 2010).”
WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES (2015, background): “A precise measurement of distance is found in Ozel et al. (2010).”
The Status of Multi-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernova Models (2016, background): “The properties of neutron stars and stellarmass black holes (masses, spins, kicks; Özel et al. 2010, 2012; Kiziltan et al. 2013; Antoniadis et al. 2016; Arzoumanian et al. 2002; Hobbs et al. 2005) cannot be understood without addressing the origin of these compact objects in stellar explosions.”
PROGENITOR-EXPLOSION CONNECTION AND REMNANT BIRTH MASSES FOR NEUTRINO-DRIVEN SUPERNOVAE OF IRON-CORE PROGENITORS (2012, result): “Correspondingly, we find a wide gap between the maximum NS birth mass (around 1.8M⊙ gravitational mass) and the minimum BH mass (roughly 6M⊙), compatible with conclusions from observed compact remnant masses (e.g., Özel et al. 2010; Valentim et al. 2011; Farr et al. 2011).”
Very massive stars, pair-instability supernovae and intermediate-mass black holes with the sevn code (2017, background): “Besides GW150914, GW151226 and GW170104, the confirmed stellar BHs are only few tens, most of them observed in Milky Way’s Xray binaries (Özel et al. 2010).”
MISSING BLACK HOLES UNVEIL THE SUPERNOVA EXPLOSION MECHANISM (2011, background): “The most recent measurements and independent sophisticated statistical analyses have further established this “mass gap” (Ozel et al. 2010; Farr et al 2011).”
Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, methodology): “…regime, the sensitive time volume scales as VT∼m15/6 (Finn & Chernoff 1993); extending our inferred mass distributions and merger rates into the possible lower BH mass gap from 3–5 M (Özel et al. 2010; Farr et al. 2011b; Kreidberg et al. 2012) yields an expected number of detected BBH mergers 1.”
Dynamics of stellar black holes in young star clusters with different metallicities – II. Black hole–black hole binaries (2014, result): “This is higher than that assumed in previous studies (e.g. Belczynski et al. 2010b), but is still consistent with the observations, given the large uncertainties (e.g. Özel et al. 2010).”
THE RATE OF BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGERS INFERRED FROM ADVANCED LIGO OBSERVATIONS SURROUNDING GW150914 (2016, background): “This distribution likely produces more low-mass BHs than the true astrophysical distribution, and therefore the sensitive time-volume is probably smaller than would be obtained with the true distribution; the estimated rate is correspondingly higher (Fryer & Kalogera 2001; Dominik et al. 2012; Fryer”
DOUBLE COMPACT OBJECTS. I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMMON ENVELOPE ON MERGER RATES (2012, methodology): “As our standard model we select the Rapid supernova engine, since this supernova mechanism, combined with binary evolution, successfully reproduces the mass gap (Belczynski et al., 2011b) observed in Galactic X-ray bi- naries (Bailyn et al., 1998; Özel et al., 2010).”
BlackCAT: A catalogue of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray transients (2015, methodology): “Thus, we have excluded Cyg X-3 from our list of BHTs. Table A.1 presents the basic astrometric properties of the BHTs sorted chronologically by year of detection in X-rays.”
Search for Gravitational Lensing Signatures in LIGO-Virgo Binary Black Hole Events (2019, background): “The lower mass limit can be a consequence of rapid supernova mechanism, which explains the mass gap ∼ 2 − 5M in X-ray measurements (Belczynski et al. 2012; Fryer et al. 2012; Özel et al. 2010).”