THE NEUTRON STAR MASS DISTRIBUTION

By B. Kiziltan, Athanasios Kottas, Maria De Yoreo, S. Thorsett. 2010

249 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In recent years, the number of pulsars with secure mass measurements has increased to a level that allows us to probe the underlying neutron star (NS) mass distribution in detail. We critically review the radio pulsar mass measurements. For the first time, we are able to analyze a sizable population of NSs with a flexible modeling approach that can effectively accommodate a skewed underlying distribution and asymmetric measurement errors. We find that NSs that have evolved through different evolutionary paths reflect distinctive signatures through dissimilar distribution peak and mass cutoff values. NSs in double NS and NS–white dwarf (WD) systems show consistent respective peaks at 1.33 M☉ and 1.55 M☉, suggesting significant mass accretion (Δm ≈ 0.22 M☉) has occurred during the spin-up phase. The width of the mass distribution implied by double NS systems is indicative of a tight initial mass function while the inferred mass range is significantly wider for NSs that have gone through recycling. We find a mass cutoff at ∼2.1 M☉ for NSs with WD companions, which establishes a firm lower bound for the maximum NS mass. This rules out the majority of strange quark and soft equation of state models as viable configurations for NS matter. The lack of truncation close to the maximum mass cutoff along with the skewed nature of the inferred mass distribution both enforce the suggestion that the 2.1 M☉ limit is set by evolutionary constraints rather than nuclear physics or general relativity, and the existence of rare supermassive NSs is possible.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4a4c115b654208149c798e045dd09dd6160843b7

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Citations in the corpus

Constraining the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars from Multi-messenger Observations of GW170817 (2017, background): “…are broadly consistent with being drawn from Galactic NS population, which is well-fit by a Gaussian of mean µ = 1.32M and standard deviation σ = 0.11M (Kiziltan et al. 2013); this hints that the HMNS formation inferred in GW170817 is likely a common−if not the most frequent−outcome of a BNS…”
The birth of black holes: neutron star collapse times, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts (2014, background): “From Kiziltan et al. (2013), MBNS ∼ N(μBNS = 1.32 M , σ BNS = 0.11), where N(μBNS, σ BNS) specifies a normal distribution with mean μBNS and standard deviation σ BNS. Binary NS mergers are believed to approximately conserve rest mass (Mrest), with 0.01 M of material ejected during the merger…”
Evidence for a maximum mass cut-off in the neutron star mass distribution and constraints on the equation of state (2017, methodology): “This is consistent with recent literature (Valentim et al. 2011; Özel et al. 2012; Kiziltan et al. 2013; Antoniadis et al. 2016).”
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.”
THE LANDSCAPE OF THE NEUTRINO MECHANISM OF CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE: NEUTRON STAR AND BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTIONS, EXPLOSION ENERGIES, AND NICKEL YIELDS (2014, background): “…energies are a few times 1051 ergs (e.g. Hamuy 2003; Dall’Ora et al. 2014), and the neutron star masses at birth are 1.2 to 1.5M⊙ (e.g. Özel et al. 2012; pejcha@astro.princeton.edu thompson@astronomy.ohio-state.edu 1 Hubble and Lyman Spitzer Jr. Fellow Pejcha et al. 2012a; Kiziltan et al. 2013).”
Non-Radial Instabilities and Progenitor Asphericities in Core-Collapse Supernovae (2014, background): “…al. 2009; Smartt 2009; Utrobin & Chugai 2011), and neutron star masses (Schwab, Podsiadlowski & Rappaport 2010; Valentim, Rangel & Horvath 2011; Özel et al. 2012; Kiziltan et al. 2013), although the explosion energies obtained by Bruenn et al. (2013) already fall roughly within the expected range.”
THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, background): “Moreover, as the Galactic binary NS population has a tight mass distribution (e.g., Valentim et al. 2011; Kiziltan et al. 2013), one can infer the expected distribution of protomagnetar masses, which is found to be Mp = 2.46 0.13 −0.15M⊙ (for details see Lasky et al. 2014).”