The effect of pair-instability mass loss on black-hole mergers

By Krzysztof Belczyński, Alexander Heger, W. Gladysz, A. Ruiter, Stan Woosley, G. Wiktorowicz, H.-Y. Chen, T. Bulik, R. O'Shaughnesy, D. Holz and 2 more. 2016

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. Mergers of two stellar-origin black holes are a prime source of gravitational waves and are under intensive investigation. One crucial ingredient in their modeling has been neglected: pair-instability pulsation supernovae with associated severe mass loss may suppress the formation of massive black holes, decreasing black-hole-merger rates for the highest black-hole masses. Aims. We demonstrate the effects of pair-instability pulsation supernovae on merger rate and mass using populations of double black-hole binaries formed through the isolated binary classical evolution channel. Methods. The mass loss from pair-instability pulsation supernova is estimated based on existing hydrodynamical calculations. This mass loss is incorporated into the StarTrack population synthesis code. StarTrack is used to generate double black-hole populations with and without pair-instability pulsation supernova mass loss. Results. The mass loss associated with pair-instability pulsation supernovae limits the Population I/II stellar-origin black-hole mass to 50 M ⊙ , in tension with earlier predictions that the maximum black-hole mass could be as high as 100 M ⊙ . In our model, neutron stars form with mass 1−2 M ⊙ . We then encounter the first mass gap at 2−5 M ⊙ with the compact object absence due to rapid supernova explosions, followed by the formation of black holes with mass 5−50 M ⊙ , with a second mass gap at 50−135 M ⊙ created by pair-instability pulsation supernovae and by pair-instability supernovae. Finally, black holes with masses above 135 M ⊙ may potentially form to arbitrarily high mass limited only by the extent of the initial mass function and the strength of stellar winds. Suppression of double black-hole-merger rates by pair-instability pulsation supernovae is negligible for our evolutionary channel. Our standard evolutionary model, with the inclusion of pair-instability pulsation supernovae and pair-instability supernovae, is fully consistent with the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) observations of black-hole mergers: GW150914, GW151226, and LVT151012. The LIGO results are inconsistent with high (≳ 400 km s -1 ) black hole (BH) natal kicks. We predict the detection of several, and up to as many as ~60, BH-BH mergers with a total mass of 10−150 M ⊙ (most likely range: 20−80 M ⊙ ) in the forthcoming ~60 effective days of the LIGO O2 observations, assuming the detectors reach the optimistic target O2 sensitivity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc8517ca8aacd8deb289f984367b236e33035a22

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

Citations in the corpus

• The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers (2019, background): “8 (see also Dominik et al. 2015, Belczynski et al. 2016a).”
• The Evolution of Massive Helium Stars, Including Mass Loss (2019, unknown): “It is considerably smaller than the 52 M value given by Woosley (2017) and 50 M given by Belczynski et al. (2016).”
• Very massive stars, pair-instability supernovae and intermediate-mass black holes with the sevn code (2017, methodology): “Most models of the BH mass spectrum include the effect of core-collapse SNe but neglect the impact of pairinstability SNe (PISNe, Fowler & Hoyle 1964) and pulsational PISNe (PPISNe), with few remarkable exceptions (Woosley 2017; Belczynski et al. 2016b).”
• Where Are LIGO’s Big Black Holes? (2017, methodology): “Before accounting for PPISN or PISN, previous population-synthesis predictions placed the maximum BH mass at 80–135M for zero age main sequence masses MZAMS < 150M (Belczynski et al. 2016c; Eldridge & Stanway 2016; Spera et al. 2016).”
• Constraints from Gravitational-wave Detections of Binary Black Hole Mergers on the 12C(α, γ)16O Rate (2020, background): “Mergers in this mass range are expected to be rare due to the difficulty in producing sufficiently massive stars in close binaries (Belczynski et al. 2016a), but they may be detectable by third-generation gravitational-wave detectors (Mangiagli et al. 2019).”
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “For instance, theoretical models of isolated evolution through common envelope lead to a distribution of times to merger ( ) µ -p t tGW GW1 (Dominik et al. 2012; Belczynski et al. 2016b).”
• Neutron Star Mergers Might Not Be the Only Source of r-process Elements in the Milky Way (2018, background): “Effects of pair-instability pulsation SNe and pair-instability SNe are taken into account, as they are believed to create the second mass gap in the observed mass distribution of compact objects (Belczynski et al. 2016).”
• GW190521: Orbital Eccentricity and Signatures of Dynamical Formation in a Binary Black Hole Merger Signal (2020, background): “…as the remnants of massive stars is thought to deplete between ∼50 and~ M135 due to pair-instability supernovae (PISN; Heger & Woosley 2002; Özel et al. 2010; Belczynski et al. 2016; Marchant et al. 2016; Fishbach & Holz 2017; Woosley 2017) unless exotic physics is invoked (Sakstein et al. 2020).”
• Merging black hole binaries with the SEVN code (2018, methodology): “The inclusion of PPISNe and PISNe would significantly reduce the maximum BH mass obtained by COMBINE at low metallicity.”
• Evolutionary roads leading to low effective spins, high black hole masses, and O1/O2 rates for LIGO/Virgo binary black holes (2017, methodology): “8 or 9 or de Mink & Belczynski 2015; Belczynski et al. 2016a).”
• Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the CMC Cluster Catalog (2019, methodology): “…stellar mergers occurring through binary evolution may have important consequences for the formation of massive BHs, specifically BHs lying within the so-called upper mass gap expected from (pulsational) pair-instability SNe (e.g., Belczynski et al. 2016a; Woosley 2016; Spera & Mapelli 2017).”
• Measuring the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum with an Astrophysically Motivated Parameterization (2018, methodology): “…gravitationalwave data to specific, non-parameterized models (Mandel & O’Shaughnessy 2010; Dominik et al. 2015; Stevenson et al. 2015, 2017a; Belczynski et al. 2016, 2017; Barrett et al. 2017; Farr et al. 2017; Miyamoto et al. 2017; Wysocki et al. 2018; Zevin et al. 2017), to attempts to…”
• GW231123: A Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190–265 M⊙ (2025, unknown): “…broadly consistent with the range ≈ 60–130 M ⊙ , there are several theoretical uncertainties that affect both the lower edge and total extent of the gap (Belczynski et al. 2016; Stevenson et al. 2019; Farmer et al. 2019; Mapelli et al. 2020; Renzo et al. 2020b; Marchant & Moriya 2020; Woosley &…”
• 4-OGC: Catalog of Gravitational Waves from Compact Binary Mergers (2021, background): “The upper mass gap is expected to occur at ∼50–120 Me(Yoshida et al. 2016; Belczynski et al. 2016; Woosley 2017, 2017; Marchant et al. 2019; Stevenson et al. 2019; van Son et al. 2020).”
• Double neutron stars: merger rates revisited (2017, methodology): “Methods in Belczynski et al. (2016a) for the full list).”