DOUBLE COMPACT OBJECTS. I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMMON ENVELOPE ON MERGER RATES

By M. Dominik, Krzysztof Belczyński, Chris L. Fryer, D. Holz, Emanuele Berti, T. Bulik, Ilya Mandel, R. O’Shaughnessy. 2012

485 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The last decade of observational and theoretical developments in stellar and binary evolution provides an opportunity to incorporate major improvements to the predictions from population synthesis models. We compute the Galactic merger rates for NS–NS, BH–NS, and BH–BH mergers with the StarTrack code. The most important revisions include updated wind mass-loss rates (allowing for stellar-mass black holes up to 80 M☉), a realistic treatment of the common envelope phase (a process that can affect merger rates by 2–3 orders of magnitude), and a qualitatively new neutron star/black hole mass distribution (consistent with the observed “mass gap”). Our findings include the following. (1) The binding energy of the envelope plays a pivotal role in determining whether a binary merges within a Hubble time. (2) Our description of natal kicks from supernovae plays an important role, especially for the formation of BH–BH systems. (3) The masses of BH–BH systems can be substantially increased in the case of low metallicities or weak winds. (4) Certain combinations of parameters underpredict the Galactic NS–NS merger rate and can be ruled out. (5) Models incorporating delayed supernovae do not agree with the observed NS/BH “mass gap,” in accordance with our previous work. This is the first in a series of three papers. The second paper will study the merger rates of double compact objects as a function of redshift, star formation rate, and metallicity. In the third paper, we will present the detection rates for gravitational-wave observatories, using up-to-date signal waveforms and sensitivity curves.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b29d44c5a91b9ba08eb487564b6231f1457ff71c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

COMPACT BINARY MERGER RATES: COMPARISON WITH LIGO/VIRGO UPPER LIMITS (2015, methodology): “For example, during CE evolution physical estimates of the donor envelope binding energy are used (Xu & Li 2010; as revised by Dominik et al. 2012), we adopt MNS,max = 2.5 M⊙ as the maximum NS mass (Lattimer & Prakash 2011), we assume the NS natal kick distribution, based on observations to be a…”
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).”
Merging black hole binaries with the SEVN code (2018, background): “In this case, we assume that the binary will not survive CE evolution, because the donor lacks a well-developed core (Dominik et al. 2012).”
Assisted inspirals of stellar mass black holes embedded in AGN discs: solving the ‘final au problem’ (2016, result): “This is broadly consistent with the range of rate estimates from population synthesis modeling of field binaries (e.g. Voss & Tauris 2003; Belczynski et al. 2010; Dominik et al. 2012, 2013).”
X-RAY BINARY EVOLUTION ACROSS COSMIC TIME (2012, background): “This in fact seems to be true for massive stars based on the actual estimates of envelope binding energies (see Fig.1-4 of Dominik et al. 2012).”
Massive double compact object mergers: gravitational wave sources and r-process element production sites (2013, methodology): “That model can then be readily compared to the results of Dominik et al. (2012) by multiplying them with a factor of 3.5/4.5=0.78.”
The Origin of r-process Elements in the Milky Way (2017, background): “Population Synthesis Population synthesis models predict NS-NS merger rates for stellar populations (e.g., Fryer et al. 1999; Voss & Tauris 2003; Mennekens & Vanbeveren 2014; Dominik et al. 2012; Belczynski et al. 2016a; Chruslinska et al. 2017).”
Where Are LIGO’s Big Black Holes? (2017, background): “However, many BBH formation models predict a preference for equal-mass mergers (Dominik et al. 2012; Rodriguez et al. 2016).”
Possible indirect confirmation of the existence of Pop III massive stars by gravitational wave (2014, methodology): “Dominik et al. (2012) computed the merger rates for the progenitor stars of metallicity Z = 0.1 Z and found that the number of the coalescing BH–BHs increases compared with that for Z = Z .”
PRODUCTION OF ALL THE r-PROCESS NUCLIDES IN THE DYNAMICAL EJECTA OF NEUTRON STAR MERGERS (2014, result): “The amount of entirely r-processed ejecta Mej ≈ 0.01 M with present estimates of the Galactic event rate (a few 10−5 yr−1, e.g., Dominik et al. 2012) is also compatible with the mass of the Galactic r-process abundances as also discussed in previous studies (Korobkin et al. 2012; Bauswein et al.…”
Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, methodology): “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).”
Rates of compact object coalescences (2021, background): “The common-envelope phase is perhaps the least certain one in massive binary evolution (Dominik et al., 2012).”
The chemically homogeneous evolutionary channel for binary black hole mergers: rates and properties of gravitational-wave events detectable by advanced LIGO (2016, result): “…black hole mergers would potentially dominate LIGO observations (e.g. Lipunov et al. 1997; Voss & Tauris 2003; Belczynski et al. 2010; Dominik et al. 2015), but these analyses also demonstrated the significant uncertainties in these predictions (e.g. Dominik et al. 2012; de Mink & Belczynski 2015).”
Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor (2017, background): “The same trend was also noted by Dominik et al. (2012), but our results show a stronger dependence on the metallicity than Dominik et al. (2012).”