The progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts

By William H. Lee, E. Ramirez-Ruiz. 2007

249 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent months have witnessed dramatic progress in our understanding of short γ-ray burst (SGRB) sources. There is now general agreement that SGRBs—or at least a substantial subset of them—are capable of producing directed outflows of relativistic matter with a kinetic luminosity exceeding by many millions that of active galactic nuclei. Given the twin requirements of energy and compactness, it is widely believed that SGRB activity is ultimately ascribable to a modest fraction of a solar mass of gas accreting on to a stellar mass black hole (BH) or to a precursor stage whose inevitable end point is a stellar mass BH. Astrophysical scenarios involving the violent birth of a rapidly rotating neutron star, or an accreting BH in a merging compact binary driven by gravitational wave emission are reviewed, along with other possible alternatives (collisions or collapse of compact objects). If a BH lies at the centre of this activity, then the fundamental pathways through which mass, angular momentum and energy can flow around and away from it play a key role in understanding how these prime movers can form collimated, relativistic outflows. Flow patterns near BHs accreting matter in the hypercritical regime, where photons are unable to provide cooling, but neutrinos do so efficiently, are discussed in detail, and we believe that they offer the best hope of understanding the central engine. On the other hand, statistical investigations of SGRB niches also furnish valuable information on their nature and evolutionary behaviour. The formation of particular kinds of progenitor sources appears to be correlated with environmental effects and cosmic epoch. In addition, there is now compelling evidence for the continuous fuelling of SGRB sources. We suggest here that the observed late flaring activity could be due to a secondary accretion episode induced by the delayed fall back of material dynamically stripped from a compact object during a merger or collision. Some important unresolved questions are identified, along with the types of observation that would discriminate among the various models. Many of the observed properties can be understood as resulting from outflows driven by hyperaccreting BHs and subsequently collimated into a pair of anti-parallel jets. It is likely that most of the radiation we receive is reprocessed by matter quite distant to the BH; SGRB jets, if powered by the hole itself, may therefore be one of the few observable consequences of how flows near nuclear density behave under the influence of strong gravitational fields.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/714cf0c3ba41110252d7ee5d2db25f829a319210

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. Stephan Rosswog
5. E. Quataert
6. R. Fern'andez
7. E. Nakar
8. D. Kasen

In Atmospheric Science

1. B. Metzger
2. E. Berger
3. R. Fern'andez
4. Stephan Rosswog
5. D. Kasen
6. T. Piran
7. E. Nakar
8. P. Lasky

Citations in the corpus

• Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger (2017, background): “Uncovering the progenitors of GRBs has been one of the key challenges in high-energy astrophysics ever since(Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007).”
• RADIATIVE TRANSFER SIMULATIONS OF NEUTRON STAR MERGER EJECTA (2013, background): “In a merger of binary NSs, a small fraction of matter is expected to be ejected (e.g., Rosswog et al. 1999; Rosswog 2005; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007; Duez 2010; Goriely et al. 2011; Rosswog 2013; Hotokezaka et al. 2013; Bauswein et al. 2013).”
• THE AFTERGLOWS OF SWIFT-ERA GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. TYPE I GRB VERSUS TYPE II GRB OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS (2008, background): “For recent reviews on short/hard GRBs, see Nakar (2007) and Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz (2007).”
• The multimessenger picture of compact object encounters: binary mergers versus dynamical collisions (2012, background): “In this context, it was pointed out that compact binary mergers possess in addition a much longer time-scale due to nearly unbound material that will finally fall back to the central remnant (Faber et al. 2006; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007; Rosswog 2007a).”
• DISCERNING THE PHYSICAL ORIGINS OF COSMOLOGICAL GAMMA-RAY BURSTS BASED ON MULTIPLE OBSERVATIONAL CRITERIA: THE CASES OF z = 6.7 GRB 080913, z = 8.2 GRB 090423, AND SOME SHORT/HARD GRBs (2009, background): “…mergers (Paczýnski 1986; Eichler et al. 1989; Narayan et al. 1992; Rosswog et al. 2003), NS-BH mergers (Paczýnski 1991; Faber et al. 2006), and possibly BH-WD or NS-WD mergers (Fryer et al. 1999; King et al. 2007)(c.f. Narayan et al. 2001), see Nakar (2007); Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz (2007) for reviews.”
• Time-dependent models of accretion discs formed from compact object mergers (2008, methodology): “Continued central engine activity at much later times could result from late-time infall of tidally stripped NS material (e.g., Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007).”
• The birth of black holes: neutron star collapse times, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts (2014, background): “…M arch 2020 can be launched from both black hole (e.g. Rezzolla et al. 2011) and NS (e.g. Metzger, Quataert & Thompson 2008) remnants of compact binary coalescences, as necessitated by the ‘relativistic fireball’ model of prompt GRB emission (e.g. Piran 1999; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007; Nakar 2007).”
• A DECADE OF SHORT-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST BROADBAND AFTERGLOWS: ENERGETICS, CIRCUMBURST DENSITIES, AND JET OPENING ANGLES (2015, background): “…consensus is thatνν̄ annihilation can only produce beamingcorrected total energy releases of 1048− 1049 erg, while MHD processes can more easily produce energy releases in excess of 1049 erg (Ruffert & Janka 1999b,a; Popham et al. 1999; Rosswog 2005; Birkl et al. 2007; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007).”
• Delayed outflows from black hole accretion tori following neutron star binary coalescence (2013, background): “MPQ09 estimated that ∼ 20 − 50% of the initial disk mass is unbound by this energy deposition, with a range of electron fractions Ye ∼ 0.1 − 0.4 resulting from varying local conditions during freeze-out (see also Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007; Beloborodov 2008).”
• GRB 080503: IMPLICATIONS OF A NAKED SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST DOMINATED BY EXTENDED EMISSION (2008, methodology): “(A review of SGRB progenitor models is given by Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007.)”
• THE FORMATION OF ECCENTRIC COMPACT BINARY INSPIRALS AND THE ROLE OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE EMISSION IN BINARY–SINGLE STELLAR ENCOUNTERS (2013, background): “The retention or ejection of binaries has implications for cluster dynamics and merger-induced transients such as e.g. short gamma-ray bursts (Belczynski et al. 2006; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007).”
• PS1-10jh: THE DISRUPTION OF A MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR OF NEAR-SOLAR COMPOSITION (2013, background): “…in the radial direction when γ < 1, as it becomes energetically favorable to collapse radially (McKee & Ostriker 2007), and can only occur axially for γ > 2, where the fastest growing mode has a non-zero wavelength and leads to fragmentation (Figure 4 of Ostriker 1964; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007).”
• Signatures of magnetar central engines in short GRB light curves (2013, methodology): “…problematic for SGRB progenitor theories as accretion is expected to end within a few seconds (powering relativistic jets; Rezzolla et al. 2011) and only a small fr ction of the merger mass is available (0.01 – 0.1 M⊙ although this is dependant on the NS equation of state, Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007).”
• The electromagnetic signals of compact binary mergers (2012, background): “(d) As the accretion disc evolves it spreads viscously until dissipational heating and/or the recombination of nucleons into nuclei unbind a large fraction of the late-time disc (Chen & Beloborodov 2007; Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007; Beloborodov 2008; Metzger, Piro & Quataert 2008).”
• CONSTRAINING THE SYMMETRY PARAMETERS OF THE NUCLEAR INTERACTION (2012, background): “Black hole–neutron star mergers are among the most likely progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts (Lee & Ramirez-Ruiz 2007), sources of gravitational radiation (see, for example, Abadie et al. 2010; Somiya 2012), and sites for the astrophysical r-process (Lattimer & Schramm 1976; Lattimer et al.…”