"Super-Kilonovae" from Massive Collapsars as Signatures of Black-Hole Birth in the Pair-instability Mass Gap

Siegel, Daniel M.; Agarwal, Aman; Barnes, Jennifer L.; Metzger, Brian D.; Renzo, M.; Villar, V. Ashley

doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.03094

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 165 publications

(271 reference statements)

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“…The upper mass gap (UMG) It is difficult to populate the BH mass range of roughly ∼ 45M to ∼ 135M with stellar collapse because of pulsational pair instability and pair instability supernova [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60]. An inferred BH mass in this range could indicate a hierarchical merger scenario [27,33,48,49,75,76,79,[114][115][116] (though this can be reasonably excluded if the BH has low spin [117,118]), or stars with spin and metallicity conditions tuned to allow gravitational collapse to a BH larger than 45 M [89,119,120] (this can push the bottom of the UMG up to 85 M in the most fine-tuned stellar environments [121]), or possibly even sustained and highly efficient accretion [122,123].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New binary black hole mergers in the LIGO--Virgo O3a data

Olsen¹,

Venumadhav²,

Mushkin³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We report the detection of ten new binary black hole (BBH) merger signals in the publicly released data from the the first half of the third observing run (O3a) of advanced LIGO and advanced Virgo. Candidates are identified using an updated version of the search pipeline described in Venumadhav et al.[1] (the "IAS pipeline" [2]), and events are declared according to criteria similar to those in the GWTC-2.1 catalog [3]. The updated search is sensitive to a larger region of parameter space, applies a template prior that accounts for different search volume as a function of intrinsic parameters, and uses an improved coherent detection statistic that optimally combines the data from the Hanford and Livingston detectors. Among the ten new events, we observe interesting astrophysical scenarios including sources with confidently large effective spin parameters in both the positive and negative directions, high-mass black holes that are difficult to form in stellar collapse models due to (pulsational) pair instability, and low-mass mergers that bridge the gap between neutron stars and the lightest observed black holes. We detect events populating the upper and lower black hole mass gaps with both extreme and near-unity mass ratios, and one of the possible neutron star-black hole (NSBH) mergers is well localized for electromagnetic (EM) counterpart searches. We see a substantial increase in significance for many of the events previously reported by other pipelines, and we detect all of the GWTC-2.1 BBH mergers with coincident data in Hanford and Livingston except for three loud events that get vetoed, which is compatible with the falsepositive rate of our veto procedure, and three that fall below the detection threshold. We also return to significance the event GW190909 114149, which was reduced to a sub-threshold trigger after its initial appearance in . This amounts to a total of 42 BBH mergers detected by our pipeline's search of the coincident Hanford-Livingston O3a data.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New binary black hole mergers in the LIGO--Virgo O3a data

Olsen¹,

Venumadhav²,

Mushkin³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…The core collapse of stars which undergo PPI may not give rise to successful energetic SN explosions due to their massive Fe cores and the large gravitational binding energy of their envelopes (e.g., Powell et al 2021;Rahman et al 2021). An alternative, potentially more promising PPISN scenario for LFBOTs would therefore invoke an initially failed neutrino-driven explosion giving rise to prompt BH formation, followed by a delayed wind-driven explosion once the outer stellar layers form an accretion disk around the BH (similar to the scenario explored in Siegel et al 2021 in the context of even more massive stars above the pair-instability mass gap). This could better explain the low ejecta mass and extreme asymmetry of the ejecta (similar to the failed SNe models described above) as well as the presence of a central engine.…”

Section: Progenitor Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients and Type Ibn/Icn SNe from Wolf-Rayet/Black Hole Mergers

Metzger

2022

Preprint

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Progenitor models for the "luminous" subclass of Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOTs; prototype: AT2018cow) are challenged to simultaneously explain all of their observed properties: fast optical rise times days; peak luminosities 10 44 erg s −1 ; low yields 0.1M of 56 Ni; aspherical ejecta with a wide velocity range ( 3000 km s −1 to 0.1 − 0.5c with increasing polar latitude); presence of hydrogen-depleted-but-not-free dense circumstellar material (CSM) on radial scales from ∼ 10 14 cm to ∼ 3×10 16 cm; embedded variable source of non-thermal X-ray/γ−rays, suggestive of a compact object. We show that all of these properties are consistent with the tidal disruption and hyper-accretion of a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star by a black hole (BH) or neutron star (NS) binary companion. In contrast with related previous models, the merger occurs with a long delay following the common envelope (CE) event responsible for birthing the binary, as a result of gradual angular momentum loss to a relic circumbinary disk. Disk-wind outflows from the merger-generated accretion flow generate the 56 Nipoor aspherical ejecta with the requisite velocity range. The optical light curve is powered primarily by reprocessing X-rays from the inner accretion flow/jet, though CSM shock interaction also contributes. Primary CSM sources include WR mass-loss from the earliest stages of the merger ( 10 14 cm) and the relic CE disk and its photoevaporation-driven wind ( 10 16 cm). Longer delayed mergers may instead give rise to supernovae Type Ibn/Icn (depending on the WR evolutionary state), connecting these transient classes with LFBOTs.

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“…The core collapse of stars that undergo PPI may not give rise to successful energetic SN explosions due to their massive Fe cores and the large gravitational binding energy of their envelopes (e.g., Powell et al 2021;Rahman et al 2022). An alternative, potentially more promising PPISN scenario for LFBOTs would therefore invoke an initially failed neutrinodriven explosion giving rise to prompt BH formation, followed by a delayed wind-driven explosion once the outer stellar layers form an accretion disk around the BH (similar to the scenario explored in Siegel et al (2021) in the context of even more massive stars above the pair-instability mass gap). This could better explain the low ejecta mass and extreme asymmetry of the ejecta (similar to the failed SNe models described above) as well as the presence of a central engine.…”

Section: Progenitor Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients and Type Ibn/Icn SNe from Wolf-Rayet/Black Hole Mergers

Metzger

2022

ApJ

Self Cite

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Progenitor models for the “luminous” subclass of Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOTs; prototype: AT2018cow) are challenged to simultaneously explain all of their observed properties: fast optical rise times of days or less; peak luminosities ≳1044 erg s−1; low yields ≲0.1M ⊙ of 56Ni; aspherical ejecta with a wide velocity range (≲3000 km s−1 to ≳0.1–0.5c with increasing polar latitude); presence of hydrogen-depleted-but-not-free dense circumstellar material (CSM) on radial scales from ∼1014 cm to ∼3 × 1016 cm; embedded variable source of non-thermal X-ray/γ-rays, suggestive of a compact object. We show that all of these properties are consistent with the tidal disruption and hyper-accretion of a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star by a black hole or neutron star binary companion. In contrast with related previous models, the merger occurs with a long delay (≳100 yr) following the common envelope (CE) event responsible for birthing the binary, as a result of gradual angular momentum loss to a relic circumbinary disk. Disk-wind outflows from the merger-generated accretion flow generate the 56Ni-poor aspherical ejecta with the requisite velocity range. The optical light curve is powered primarily by reprocessing X-rays from the inner accretion flow/jet, though CSM shock interaction also contributes. Primary CSM sources include WR mass loss from the earliest stages of the merger (≲1014 cm) and the relic CE disk and its photoevaporation-driven wind (≳1016 cm). Longer delayed mergers may instead give rise to supernovae Type Ibn/Icn (depending on the WR evolutionary state), connecting these transient classes with LFBOTs.

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"Super-Kilonovae" from Massive Collapsars as Signatures of Black-Hole Birth in the Pair-instability Mass Gap

Cited by 13 publications

References 165 publications

New binary black hole mergers in the LIGO--Virgo O3a data

New binary black hole mergers in the LIGO--Virgo O3a data

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients and Type Ibn/Icn SNe from Wolf-Rayet/Black Hole Mergers

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients and Type Ibn/Icn SNe from Wolf-Rayet/Black Hole Mergers

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