Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE

By M. Kruckow, T. Tauris, N. Langer, Michael Kramer, Robert G. Izzard. Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2018

247 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The first gravitational wave detections of mergers between black holes and neutron stars represent a remarkable new regime of high-energy transient astrophysics. The signals observed with LIGO-Virgo detectors come from mergers of extreme physical objects which are the end products of stellar evolution in close binary systems. To better understand their origin and merger rates, we have performed binary population syntheses at different metallicities using the new grid-based binary population synthesis code ComBinE. Starting from newborn pairs of stars, we follow their evolution including mass loss, mass transfer and accretion, common envelopes and supernova explosions. We apply the binding energies of common envelopes based on dense grids of detailed stellar structure models, make use of improved investigations of the subsequent Case BB Roche-lobe overflow and scale supernova kicks according to the stripping of the exploding stars. We demonstrate that all the double black hole mergers, GW150914, LVT151012, GW151226, GW170104, GW170608 and GW170814, as well as the double neutron star merger GW170817, are accounted for in our models in the appropriate metallicity regime. Our binary interaction parameters are calibrated to match the accurately determined properties of Galactic double neutron star systems, and we discuss their masses and types of supernova origin. Using our default values for the input physics parameters, we find a double neutron star merger rate of about 3.0 Myr-1 for Milky-Way equivalent galaxies. Our upper limit to the merger-rate density of double neutron stars is R≃400 yr-1 Gpc-3 in the local Universe (z=0).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5654b7722096d44862e40b179146cafb84b4155a

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Citations in the corpus

Evolutionary roads leading to low effective spins, high black hole masses, and O1/O2 rates for LIGO/Virgo binary black holes (2017, background): “The efficiency of accretion in the first episode of mass transfer was noted to have possible impact on the BH-NS formation (Kruckow et al. 2018).”
The progenitors of compact-object binaries: impact of metallicity, common envelope and natal kicks (2018, background): “…2017; de Mink & Belczynski 2015; de Mink & Mandel 2016; Marchant et al. 2016; Chruslinska et al. 2018; Mapelli et al. 2017; Giacobbo et al. 2018; Kruckow et al. 2018; Shao & Li 2018) and from dynamics (e.g. Kulkarni et al. 1993; Sigurdsson & Phinney 1993; Sigurdsson & Hernquist 1993; Sigurdsson…”
COSMIC Variance in Binary Population Synthesis (2019, methodology): “Another approach is to generate large libraries of lookup tables for single stars and then use interpolation combined with simple binary evolution prescriptions, as done in SEVN (Spera et al. 2015; Spera & Mapelli 2017; Spera et al. 2019) or ComBinE (Kruckow et al. 2018).”
Merging black hole binaries with the SEVN code (2018, methodology): “In COMBINE, a BH forms if the final CO core mass of a star is > 6.5 M and the BH mass is calculated assuming a fixed amount of fallback (80 per cent of the mass of the He envelope).”
The cosmic merger rate of neutron stars and black holes (2018, background): “…that we consider large values of α is also one of the most likely reasons why our DNS merger rates are significantly larger than the ones obtained by Kruckow et al. (2018), who assume α < 1 (but our treatment of both binary evolution processes and the cosmological framework are also significantly…”
The origin of spin in binary black holes (2019, background): “…the BBH system can coalesce into a single, more massive BH. Previous theoretical works focused on the first few observed GW events suggest that these BBHs are consistent with having been formed through the CE formation channel (Stevenson et al. 2017; Giacobbo et al. 2018; Kruckow et al. 2018).”
Merging black holes in young star clusters (2019, background): “…de Mink & Belczynski 2015; de Mink & Mandel 2016; Marchant et al. 2016; Belczynski et al. 2016a; Chruslinska et al. 2018; Mapelli et al. 2017; Giacobbo et al. 2018; Giacobbo & Mapelli 2018, 2019; Mapelli & Giacobbo 2018; Mapelli et al. 2018; Kruckow et al. 2018; Shao & Li 2018; Spera et al. 2018).”
The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers (2019, background): “This is comparable to the impact of uncertainties on evolutionary physics such as wind mass-loss rates, conservativeness of mass transfer, the efficiency of common-envelope evolution, and BH natal kicks (Dominik et al. 2012; Giacobbo & Mapelli 2018; Kruckow et al. 2018).”
Two populations of LIGO-Virgo black holes (2020, background): “Due to these uncertainties the estimated rates of BH-BH mergers produced via isolated binary evolution vary quite substantially: 10− 300 Gpc−3yr−1 [95, 97–99].”
Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “…2016; Mapelli et al. 2017; Stevenson et al. 2017b; Tauris et al. 2017; Chruslinska et al. 2018; Giacobbo & Mapelli 2018; Giacobbo et al. 2018; Kruckow et al. 2018; Mapelli & Giacobbo 2018) or via chemically homogeneous evolution(de Mink & Mandel 2016; Mandel & de Mink 2016; Marchant et al.…”
Neutron Star Mergers Might Not Be the Only Source of r-process Elements in the Milky Way (2018, result): “These results are consistent with other population synthesis studies (Chruslinska et al. 2018; Kruckow et al. 2018; Vigna-Gómez et al. 2018; Giacobbo & Mapelli 2018).”
Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA (2013, background): “…upon astrophysical population models and observations of Galactic BNS systems (e.g., Abadie et al. 2010b; Kim et al. 2013; Dominik et al. 2015; Vangioni et al. 2016; de Mink and Belczynski 2015; Eldridge et al. 2017; Belczynski et al. 2017; Kruckow et al. 2018) remains an active are of research.”
Rates of compact object coalescences (2021, background): “Historically, the focus has been primarily on young star clusters and globular clusters, where dynamical formation has been explored by Sigurdsson and Hernquist (1993); Kulkarni et al. (1993); Portegies Zwart and McMillan (2000); O’Leary et al. (2006); Banerjee”
The Evolution of Massive Helium Stars, Including Mass Loss (2019, background): “…Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, woosley@ucolick.org considered specifically in the context of mass exchanging binaries by Kruckow et al. (2018); McClelland & Eldridge (2016); Tauris et al. (2015); Yoon et al. (2010); Yoon (2017), and others.”