THE MISSING LINK: MERGING NEUTRON STARS NATURALLY PRODUCE JET-LIKE STRUCTURES AND CAN POWER SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

By Luciano Rezzolla, B. Giacomazzo, Luca Baiotti, J. Granot, C. Kouveliotou, M. Aloy. 2011

330 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) are among the most luminous explosions in the universe, releasing in less than one second the energy emitted by our Galaxy over one year. Despite decades of observations, the nature of their “central engine” remains unknown. Considering a binary of magnetized neutron stars and solving the Einstein equations, we show that their merger results in a rapidly spinning black hole surrounded by a hot and highly magnetized torus. Lasting over 35 ms and much longer than previous simulations, our study reveals that magnetohydrodynamical instabilities amplify an initially turbulent magnetic field of ∼1012 G to produce an ordered poloidal field of ∼1015 G along the black hole spin axis, within a half-opening angle of ∼30°, which may naturally launch a relativistic jet. The broad consistency of our ab initio calculations with SGRB observations shows that the merger of magnetized neutron stars can provide the basic physical conditions for the central engine of SGRBs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb9da82df6c93d06f0829ce5efa05b58d85e0b03

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Citations in the corpus

Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems (2017, methodology): “Short GRBs Merging DNS and NS+BH binaries are considered the most promising sources to explain the phenomenology of short GRBs (Paczynski 1986; Eichler et al. 1989; Narayan et al. 1992; Fox et al. 2005; Rezzolla et al. 2011; Berger 2014).”
Long-term GRMHD simulations of neutron star merger accretion discs: implications for electromagnetic counterparts (2018, background): “Jet-like structures have nevertheless been observed to arise from mergers of neutron stars with interior poloidal fields (Rezzolla et al. 2011; Ruiz et al. 2016).”
Signatures of magnetar central engines in short GRB light curves (2013, methodology): “Beaming, with a half-opening angle of 30◦, has been shown to form via the formation of an ordered magentic field during the merger of two 1.5 M⊙ NSs which collapse to form a BH (Rezzolla et al. 2011).”
Optical and X-ray emission from stable millisecond magnetars formed from the merger of binary neutron stars (2013, background): “The newly created black hole is surrounded by a thick remnant torus of massMt ∼ 10−2M⊙, which accretes and powers the transient relativistic jet responsible for the GRB (e.g., Narayan et al. 1992; Rezzolla et al. 2011).”
The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “…more detailed discussions of short GRB central engine, please see e.g. Ruffert and Janka (1999); Rosswog et al. (2003); Aloy et al. (2005); Lee and Ramirez-Ruiz (2007); Nakar (2007); Baiotti et al. (2008); Dessart et al. (2008); Gehrels et al. (2009); Rezzolla et al. (2011) and references therein.”
Double neutron stars: merger rates revisited (2017, methodology): “Setting the maximum opening angle θ j;max = 30◦ (as suggested by the simulations, e.g. Rezzolla et al. 2011) results in the median of θ j = 16+11 ◦ −10◦ .”
WHAT IS THE MOST PROMISING ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPART OF A NEUTRON STAR BINARY MERGER? (2011, background): “The most commonly discussed EM counterpart of NSNS/NS-BH mergers is an SGRB, powered by accretion onto the central compact object (e.g., Paczynski 1986; Eichler et al. 1989; Narayan et al. 1992; Rezzolla et al. 2011).”
THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FOLLOW-UP WITH ADVANCED LIGO AND VIRGO (2014, background): “…Berger 2012) including collimated short-hard gamma-ray bursts (short GRBs; see for example Paczynski 1986; Eichler et al. 1989; Narayan et al. 1992; Rezzolla et al. 2011) and X-ray/optical afterglows, near-infrared kilonovae (viewable from all angles; Li & Paczyński 1998; Barnes & Kasen 2013,…”
THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, background): “For NS-NS mergers, the traditional view is that a BH is formed promptly or with a short delay up to hundreds of milliseconds (e.g. Liu et al. 2012; Rosswog et al. 2003; Rezzolla et al. 2011).”
Using Gravitational-wave Observations and Quasi-universal Relations to Constrain the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars (2017, background): “Second, it provides important clues to solve the long-standing puzzle of the origin of SGRBs (Eichler et al. 1989; Narayan et al. 1992; Rezzolla et al. 2011; Berger 2014).”
THC: a new high-order finite-difference high-resolution shock-capturing code for special-relativistic hydrodynamics (2012, methodology): “Finally, THC represents the first step towards the implementation of new and high-order methods for the accurate study of general-relativistic problems, such as the inspiral and merger of binary neutron stars (Baiotti et al. 2011) and their relation with gamma-ray bursts (Rezzolla et al. 2011).”
The birth of black holes: neutron star collapse times, gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts (2014, background): “…where N(μBNS, σ BNS) specifies a normal distribution with mean μBNS and standard deviation σ BNS. Binary NS mergers are believed to approximately conserve rest mass (Mrest), with 0.01 M of material ejected during the merger (Rezzolla et al. 2011; Giacomazzo & Perna 2013; Hotokezaka et al. 2013).”
Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Mass Ejection, Electromagnetic Counterparts, and Nucleosynthesis (2018, background): “…or included GR effects, but compromised on the treatment of NS matter (Shibata & Uryu 2000; Shibata et al. 2003, 2005; Baiotti et al. 2008; Kiuchi et al. 2010; Rezzolla et al. 2010, 2011; Hotokezaka et al. 2011, 2013a, 2013b; Palenzuela et al. 2013; Ruiz et al. 2016; Dietrich et al. 2017a, 2017b).”