ON THE MASS DISTRIBUTION AND BIRTH MASSES OF NEUTRON STARS

By F. Özel, Dimitrios Psaltis, Ramesh Narayan, Antonio Santos Villarreal. 2012

249 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the distribution of neutron star masses in different populations of binaries, employing Bayesian statistical techniques. In particular, we explore the differences in neutron star masses between sources that have experienced distinct evolutionary paths and accretion episodes. We find that the distribution of neutron star masses in non-recycled eclipsing high-mass binaries as well as of slow pulsars, which are all believed to be near their birth masses, has a mean of 1.28 M☉ and a dispersion of 0.24 M☉. These values are consistent with expectations for neutron star formation in core-collapse supernovae. On the other hand, double neutron stars, which are also believed to be near their birth masses, have a much narrower mass distribution, peaking at 1.33 M☉, but with a dispersion of only 0.05 M☉. Such a small dispersion cannot easily be understood and perhaps points to a particular and rare formation channel. The mass distribution of neutron stars that have been recycled has a mean of 1.48 M☉ and a dispersion of 0.2 M☉, consistent with the expectation that they have experienced extended mass accretion episodes. The fact that only a very small fraction of recycled neutron stars in the inferred distribution have masses that exceed ∼2 M☉ suggests that only a few of these neutron stars cross the mass threshold to form low-mass black holes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ddf7161187ff9d959073f6c84a88d74abb9c0432

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

Citations in the corpus

PULSAR J0453+1559: A DOUBLE NEUTRON STAR SYSTEM WITH A LARGE MASS ASYMMETRY (2015, result): “…of PSR J0453+1559—the largest ever measured in a DNS system (see Table 1)—and that of its companion— the smallest precisely measured for any NS—shows that the range of NS birth masses is indeed substantially wider than earlier studies indicated (Thorsett & Chakrabarty 1999 and Özel et al. 2012).”
The search for failed supernovae with the Large Binocular Telescope: confirmation of a disappearing star (2016, background): “Such continous distributions are inconsistent with observations showing a significant gap between neutron star and black hole masses (Özel et al. 2012; Kreid- ar X iv :1 60 9.”
THE LANDSCAPE OF THE NEUTRINO MECHANISM OF CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE: NEUTRON STAR AND BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTIONS, EXPLOSION ENERGIES, AND NICKEL YIELDS (2014, background): “Instead of a detailed comparison, we show in the top panel of Figure 18 the observed mean and width of double neutron stars along with their confidence intervals from Özel et al. (2012).”
Measuring the Progenitor Masses and Dense Circumstellar Material of Type II Supernovae (2017, background): “Therefore the inferred maximum mass for SN II progenitors may or may not explain the observed distribution of Galactic black hole masses (Özel et al. 2010) and the origin of a potential mass gap between neutron stars and black holes (Özel et al. 2012).”
THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FOLLOW-UP WITH ADVANCED LIGO AND VIRGO (2014, background): “Component masses were distributed uniformly between 1.2 and 1.6 M , bracketing measured masses for components of known BNS systems as well as the 1-σ intervals of the intrinsic mass distributions inferred for a variety of NS formation channels (Pejcha et al. 2012; Özel et al. 2012).”
Supernova simulations from a 3D progenitor model - Impact of perturbations and evolution of explosion properties (2017, background): “This would put model s18-3D above the peak of the neutron star mass distribution (Özel et al. 2012; Özel & Freire 2016), but is again not an implausible value.”
Ultra-stripped supernovae: progenitors and fate (2015, background): “For recent discussions on the upper limit of NS birth masses in binaries, see e.g. Tauris et al. (2011); Özel et al. (2012); Fryer et al. (2012).”
Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, methodology): “Unfortunately, with only one confident detection, it is not yet possible to infer details of binary neutron star populations more than to note that the GW measurement is mostly compatible with the observed Galactic population(Özel et al. 2012).”
Non-Radial Instabilities and Progenitor Asphericities in Core-Collapse Supernovae (2014, background): “…et al. 2009; Smartt 2009; Utrobin & Chugai 2011), and neutron star masses (Schwab, Podsiadlowski & Rappaport 2010; Valentim, Rangel & Horvath 2011; Özel et al. 2012; Kiziltan et al. 2013), although the explosion energies obtained by Bruenn et al. (2013) already fall roughly within the expected…”
The Status of Multi-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernova Models (2016, background): “The properties of neutron stars and stellarmass black holes (masses, spins, kicks; Özel et al. 2010, 2012; Kiziltan et al. 2013; Antoniadis et al. 2016; Arzoumanian et al. 2002; Hobbs et al. 2005) cannot be understood without addressing the origin of these compact objects in stellar explosions.”
2-OGC: Open Gravitational-wave Catalog of Binary Mergers from Analysis of Public Advanced LIGO and Virgo Data (2019, background): “An ex- ample is the sub-threshold search of Fermi-GBM and 1- OGC triggers (Nitz et al. 2019b), which defined, based on galactic neutron star observations (Ozel et al. 2012), a likely BNS merger region to span 1.03 < M < 1.36 and effective spin |χeff | < 0.2.”
GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs (2018, methodology): “[198] Feryal Özel, Dimitrios Psaltis, Ramesh Narayan, and Antonio Santos Villarreal, “On the Mass Distribution and Birth Masses of Neutron Stars,” Astrophys.”
Evidence for a maximum mass cut-off in the neutron star mass distribution and constraints on the equation of state (2017, methodology): “through optical and x-ray observations (Özel et al. 2012; Falanga et al. 2015).”