The mass spectrum of compact remnants from the parsec stellar evolution tracks

By Mario Spera, Michela Mapelli, A. Bressan. 2015

258 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mass spectrum of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) is highly uncertain. Dynamical mass measurements are available only for few ( 10) BHs in X-ray binaries, while theoretical models strongly depend on the hydrodynamics of supernova (SN) explosions and on the evolution of massive stars. In this paper, we present and discuss the mass spectrum of compact remnants that we obtained with SEVN, a new public populationsynthesis code, which couples the PARSEC stellar evolution tracks with up-to-date recipes for SN explosion (depending on the Carbon-Oxygen mass of the progenitor, on the compactness of the stellar core at pre-SN stage, and on a recent two-parameter criterion based on the dimensionless entropy per nucleon at pre-SN stage). SEVN can be used both as a stand-alone code and in combination with direct-summation N-body codes (Starlab, HiGPUs). The PARSEC stellar evolution tracks currently implemented in SEVN predict signicantly larger values of the Carbon-Oxygen core mass with respect to previous models. For most of the SN recipes we adopt, this implies substantially larger BH masses at low metallicity (6 2 10 3 ), than other populationsynthesis codes. The maximum BH mass found with SEVN is 25, 60 and 130 M at metallicity Z = 2 10 2 , 2 10 3 and 2 10 4 , respectively. Mass loss by stellar winds plays a major role in determining the mass of BHs for very massive stars (> 90 M ), while the remnant mass spectrum depends mostly on the adopted SN recipe for lower progenitor masses. We discuss the implications of our results for the transition between NS and BH mass, and for the expected number of massive BHs (with mass > 25 M ) as a function of metallicity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9f875401d3ca61d034fc40ebb5d78031944bedbf

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michela Mapelli
2. N. Giacobbo
3. Mario Spera
4. Ilya Mandel
5. D. Holz
6. F. Antonini
7. F. Rasio
8. Maya Fishbach

Citations in the corpus

• Does the Black Hole Merger Rate Evolve with Redshift? (2018, background): “…metallicities, we might expect that the rate density follows the low-metallicity SFR, ψ(z) fZ(z), where fZ(z) is the fraction of star formation occurring at metallicity ≤ Z at redshift z (Belczynski et al. 2010; Mapelli et al. 2013; Spera et al. 2015; Abbott et al. 2016a; Mandel & de Mink 2016).”
• The first gravitational-wave source from the isolated evolution of two stars in the 40–100 solar mass range (2016, methodology): “nd in particular we do not exceed 15 M⊙ for Z⊙ (the highest mass stellar BH known in our Galaxy). In contrast, single stellar models used to derive the high metallicity threshold produce 25 M⊙ for Z⊙ (52). The highest threshold obtained with binary evolution was reported at the level of 50% Z⊙ (14).”
• DYNAMICAL FORMATION OF THE GW150914 BINARY BLACK HOLE (2016, background): “…is unsurprising: lower metallicities yield less effective stellar winds (Vink 2011), reducing the amount of mass that is lost before a massive star collapses, and producing “heavy” BHs like the observed components of GW150914 (Belczynski et al. 2010; Mapelli et al. 2013; Spera et al. 2015).”
• THE RATE OF BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGERS INFERRED FROM ADVANCED LIGO OBSERVATIONS SURROUNDING GW150914 (2016, background): “This flat distribution in mass probably weights more heavily toward high-mass BHs than the true astrophysical distribution (Fryer & Kalogera 2001; Dominik et al. 2012; Fryer et al. 2012; Spera et al. 2015).”
• Merging black hole binaries with the SEVN code (2018, methodology): “The prescriptions for SNe adopted in SEVN were already described in Spera et al. (2015) and in Spera & Mapelli (2017).”
• The cosmic merger rate of neutron stars and black holes (2018, background): “…of kick is scaled by the fallback as vBH = vNS (1− ffb), where vBH is the natal kick for the BH, vNS is the natal kick for a NS (drawn from a Maxwellian distribution as described above), and ffb (ranging from 0 to 1) is the amount of fallback on the proto-NS (Fryer et al. 2012; Spera et al. 2015).”
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “…& Yungelson 1998; Belczynski et al. 2002, 2007, 2008, 2014; Voss & Tauris 2003; Dewi et al. 2006; Dominik et al. 2013; Mennekens & Vanbeveren 2014; Spera et al. 2015; Eldridge & Stanway 2016; Mapelli et al. 2017; Stevenson et al. 2017b; Tauris et al. 2017; Chruslinska et al. 2018; Giacobbo &…”
• The effect of pair-instability mass loss on black-hole mergers (2016, background): “This may be contrasted with earlier predictions that the maximum mass of black holes can reach 80−130 M in the evolution of Population I/II stars with modest initial masses of Mzams < 150 M (Zampieri & Roberts 2009; Mapelli et al. 2009; Belczynski et al. 2010a; Spera et al. 2015, 2016).”
• Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and their role in gravitational-wave generation (2016, background): “Given the current knowledge on stellar winds in different evolutionary stages of massive stars as a function of metallicity, determining the remnant BH mass, it is likely that such ≈ 30M BHs are formed in sub-solar metallicity regions (Belczynski et al. 2010; Spera et al. 2015).”
• The cosmic merger rate of stellar black hole binaries from the Illustris simulation (2017, methodology): “See also equation 1 and the text for details. where vBH is the natal kick for the BH, vNS is the natal kick for a NS (drawn from the distribution proposed by Hobbs et al. 2005), and ffb (ranging from 0 to 1) is the amount of fallback on the proto-NS (Fryer et al. 2012; Spera et al. 2015).”
• Very massive stars, pair-instability supernovae and intermediate-mass black holes with the sevn code (2017, methodology): “The mass of a compact object is expected to strongly depend on the evolution of its progenitor and on the final supernova (SN) mechanism (Mapelli et al. 2009; Belczynski et al. 2010; Mapelli et al. 2013; Spera et al. 2015).”
• MERGING BLACK HOLE BINARIES IN GALACTIC NUCLEI: IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVANCED-LIGO DETECTIONS (2016, background): “…stellar environments (e.g., Portegies Zwart & McMillan 2000; Miller & Lauburg 2009; Banerjee et al. 2010; Downing et al. 2011; Rodriguez et al. 2015), and isolated binary evolution (e.g., Belczynski et al. 2002; Dominik et al. 2012; Spera et al. 2015; Belczynski et al. 2016; de Mink & Mandel 2016).”
• Pulsational Pair-instability Supernovae (2016, background): “…star will end its life as a PPISN (or a PISN), but an appreciable fraction of stars with metallicity below 1/3 Z might (see also Georgy et al. 2013; Spera et al. 2015; Langer et al. 2007; Yusof et al. 2013), especially if the metallicity scaling of Vink et al. (2001) is employed instead of Z0.”
• Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run (2016, unknown): “[187].”