BRIGHT “MERGER-NOVA” FROM THE REMNANT OF A NEUTRON STAR BINARY MERGER: A SIGNATURE OF A NEWLY BORN, MASSIVE, MILLISECOND MAGNETAR

By Yun-Wei Yu, Bing Zhang, He Gao. 2013

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A massive millisecond magnetar may survive the merger of a neutron star (NS) binary, which would continuously power the merger ejecta. We develop a generic dynamic model for the merger ejecta with energy injection from the central magnetar. The ejecta emission (the “merger-nova”) powered by the magnetar peaks in the UV band and the peak of the light curve, progressively shifts to an earlier epoch with increasing frequency. A magnetar-powered merger-nova could have an optical peak brightness comparable to a supernova, which is a few tens or hundreds times brighter than the radioactive-powered merger-novae (the so-called macro-nova or kilo-nova). On the other hand, such a merger-nova would peak earlier and have a significantly shorter duration than that of a supernova. An early collapse of the magnetar could suppress the brightness of the optical emission and shorten its duration. Such millisecond-magnetar-powered merger-novae may be detected from NS–NS merger events without an observed short gamma-ray burst, and could be a bright electromagnetic counterpart for gravitational wave bursts due to NS–NS mergers. If detected, it suggests that the merger leaves behind a massive NS, which has important implications for the equation-of-state of nuclear matter.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fed1b2bc37627a1ab8c1b4b2d956a1a58f92ef82

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

1. E. Berger
2. B. Metzger
3. Bing Zhang
4. Ryan Chornock
5. W. Fong
6. Pawan Kumar
7. S. Smartt
8. P. Lasky

Citations in the corpus

• An Embedded X-Ray Source Shines through the Aspherical AT 2018cow: Revealing the Inner Workings of the Most Luminous Fast-evolving Optical Transients (2018, background): “(ii) Models involving prolonged energy injection from a central compact object, such as a magnetar with a millisecond rotation period (Yu et al. 2013; Metzger & Piro 2014; Hotokezaka et al. 2017), an accreting neutron star (NS; e.g., following a WD–NS merger; Margalit & Metzger 2016), or an…”
• THE MILLISECOND MAGNETAR CENTRAL ENGINE IN SHORT GRBs (2015, background): “…radiation even if the short GRB jet does not beam towards earth, so that some interesting observational signatures are expected to be associated with gravitational wave signals in the Advanced LIGO/Virgo era (Zhang 2013; Gao et al. 2013; Yu et al. 2013; Fan et al. 2013b; Metzger & Piro 2014).”
• RAPIDLY EVOLVING AND LUMINOUS TRANSIENTS FROM PAN-STARRS1 (2014, background): “Both Yu et al. (2013) and Metzger & Piro (2014) investigate the electromagnetic counterparts that would be produced from the formation of such a system if the magnetar spin-down energy is channeled into the ejecta from the merger, as opposed to a collimated jet.”
• The Cow: Discovery of a Luminous, Hot, and Rapidly Evolving Transient (2018, background): “A number of models have been put forward for the special case of the formation of a magnetar in a binary neutron star merger (Gao et al. 2013; Yu et al. 2013; Metzger & Piro 2014).”
• A POSSIBLE CONNECTION BETWEEN FAST RADIO BURSTS AND GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2013, background): “This can happen both in massive star core collapses (Troja et al. 2007) and NS-NS mergers (Zhang 2013; Gao et al. 2013a; Yu et al. 2013).”
• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “, 2013a), as well as a merger-nova brighter than the “kilo-nova” predicted for a black hole central engine (Yu et al., 2013; Metzger and Piro, 2014).”
• Constraining the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars from Multi-messenger Observations of GW170817 (2017, background): “Several works have explored the potentially exotic EM signals of BNS mergers in cases when a long-lived SMNS or stable neutron star remnant is formed (Metzger et al. 2008b; Bucciantini et al. 2012; Yu et al. 2013; Metzger & Bower 2014; Metzger & Piro 2014; Gao et al. 2016; Siegel & Ciolfi 2016a,b).”