A Comprehensive Study of Binary Compact Objects as Gravitational Wave Sources: Evolutionary Channels, Rates, and Physical Properties

By Krzysztof Belczyński, Vicky Kalogera, T. Bulik. 2001

769 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A new generation of ground-based interferometric detectors for gravitational waves is currently under construction or has entered the commissioning phase (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory [LIGO], VIRGO, GEO600, TAMA300). The purpose of these detectors is to observe gravitational waves from astrophysical sources and help improve our understanding of the source origin and physical properties. In this paper we study the most promising candidate sources for these detectors: inspiraling double compact objects. We use population synthesis methods to calculate the properties and coalescence rates of compact object binaries: double neutron stars, black hole-neutron star systems, and double black holes. We also examine the formation channels available to double compact object binaries. We explicitly account for the evolution of low-mass helium stars and investigate the possibility of common-envelope evolution involving helium stars as well as two evolved stars. As a result we identify a significant number of new formation channels for double neutron stars, in particular, leading to populations with very distinct properties. We discuss the theoretical and observational implications of such populations, but we also note the need for hydrodynamical calculations to settle the question of whether such common-envelope evolution is possible. We also present and discuss the physical properties of compact object binaries and identify a number of robust, qualitative features as well as their origin. Using the calculated coalescence rates we compare our results to earlier studies and derive expected detection rates for LIGO. We find that our most optimistic estimate for the first LIGO detectors reach a couple of events per year and our most pessimistic estimate for advanced LIGO detectors exceed ≃10 events per year.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/68e44a375a7d33765ee1aa28324a0166610d3996

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Citations in the corpus

• RATES AND DELAY TIMES OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2009, methodology): “A detailed description of the input physics is presented in Belczynski et al. (2002, 2008).”
• Lidov–Kozai Cycles with Gravitational Radiation: Merging Black Holes in Isolated Triple Systems (2016, background): “For these reasons, the standard picture of the merger of an isolated black-hole binary involves a common-envelope phase, which dramatically shrinks the orbit of the stellar cores, before they collapse to black holes (Belczynski et al. 2002; Dominik et al. 2012).”
• Galactic distribution of merging neutron stars and black holes – prospects for short gamma-ray burst progenitors and LIGO/VIRGO (2003, methodology): “…the constant value of λ ∼ 0.5 often used in the literature (e.g. Portegies Zwart & Yungelson 1998; Fryer, Woosley & Hartmann 1999; Bloom, Sigurdsson & Pols 1999; Hurley, Tout & Pols 2002, or alternatively, ληCE is used as a single free parameter: Belczynski et al. 2002a,b; Perna & Belczynski 2002).”
• Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and their role in gravitational-wave generation (2016, methodology): “SB is thankful to Chris Belczynski of the Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw, for supplying the data corresponding to the ZAMS mass-remnant mass relations, as obtained from the StarTrack program (Fig.”
• X-RAY BINARY EVOLUTION ACROSS COSMIC TIME (2012, methodology): “Parameter study StarTrack PS models have a significant number of free parameters, which can be categorized into two groups.”
• GWTC-2.1: Deep extended catalog of compact binary coalescences observed by LIGO and Virgo during the first half of the third observing run (2021, result): “The masses and effective inspiral spin of this candidate are consistent with prior expectations for NSBH systems [260,282 – 288].”
• Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, neutral): “Examples include Bloom et al. (1999); Belczynski et al. (2002); Voss & Tauris (2003); Belczynski et al. (2008); Dominik et al. (2012); Mennekens & Vanbeveren (2014); Belczynski et al. (2016); Eldridge & Stanway (2016); Stevenson et al. (2017a); Chruslinska et al. (2018); Vigna-Gómez et al. (2018).”
• LIGO: The laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (2006, background): “The name follows from the fact that the best understood transient sources are the final stages of binary inspirals [52], where each component of the binary may be a NS or a BH.”
• Compact binaries in star clusters – I. Black hole binaries inside globular clusters (2009, methodology): “The mass of single BHs is calculated according to Belczynski et al. (2002).”
• Ultra-stripped supernovae: progenitors and fate (2015, background): “17), so this issue should not affect much the predictions for the detection rate of LIGO/VIRGO which are based c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS000, 000–000 on population synthesis (e.g. Belczynski et al. 2002; Voss &Tauris 2003).”