skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Dynamical ejecta synchrotron emission as a possible contributor to the changing behaviour of GRB170817A afterglow
ABSTRACT Over the past 3 yr, the fading non-thermal emission from the GW170817 remained generally consistent with the afterglow powered by synchrotron radiation produced by the interaction of the structured jet with the ambient medium. Recent observations by Hajela et al. indicate the change in temporal and spectral behaviour in the X-ray band. We show that the new observations are compatible with the emergence of a new component due to non-thermal emission from the fast tail of the dynamical ejecta of ab-initio binary neutron star merger simulations. This provides a new avenue to constrain binary parameters. Specifically, we find that equal mass models with soft equations of state (EOSs) and high-mass ratio models with stiff EOSs are disfavoured as they typically predict afterglows that peak too early to explain the recent observations. Moderate stiffness and mass ratio models, instead, tend to be in good overall agreement with the data.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2020275 2011725
PAR ID:
10331370
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume:
506
Issue:
4
ISSN:
0035-8711
Page Range / eLocation ID:
5908 to 5915
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. (, Physical review)
    null (Ed.)
    Binary neutron star mergers provide a unique probe of the dense-matter equation of state (EoS) across a wide range of parameter space, from the zero-temperature EoS during the inspiral to the high-temperature EoS following the merger. In this paper, we implement a new model for calculating parametrized finite-temperature EoS effects into numerical relativity simulations. This "M* model" is based on a two-parameter approximation of the particle effective mass and includes the leading-order effects of degeneracy in the thermal pressure and energy. We test our numerical implementation by performing evolutions of rotating single stars with zero- and non-zero temperature gradients, as well as evolutions of binary neutron star mergers. We find that our new finite-temperature EoS implementation can support stable stars over many dynamical timescales. We also perform a first parameter study to explore the role of the M* parameters in binary neutron star merger simulations. All simulations start from identical initial data with identical cold EoSs, and differ only in the thermal part of the EoS. We find that both the thermal profile of the remnant and the post-merger gravitational wave signal depend on the choice of M* parameters, but that the total merger ejecta depends only weakly on the finite-temperature part of the EoS across a wide range of parameters. Our simulations provide a first step toward understanding how the finite-temperature properties of dense matter may affect future observations of binary neutron star mergers. 
    more » « less
  2. (, Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science)
    Neutron stars provide a window into the properties of dense nuclear matter. Several recent observational and theoretical developments provide powerful constraints on their structure and internal composition. Among these are the first observed binary neutron star merger, GW170817, whose gravitational radiation was accompanied by electromagnetic radiation from a short γ-ray burst and an optical afterglow believed to be due to the radioactive decay of newly minted heavy r-process nuclei. These observations give important constraints on the radii of typical neutron stars and on the upper limit to the neutron star maximum mass and complement recent pulsar observations that established a lower limit. Pulse-profile observations by the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray telescope provide an independent, consistent measure of the neutron star radius. Theoretical many-body studies of neutron matter reinforce these estimates of neutron star radii. Studies using parameterized dense matter equations of state (EOSs) reveal several EOS-independent relations connecting global neutron star properties. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)
    ABSTRACT GW190425 was the second gravitational wave (GW) signal compatible with a binary neutron star (BNS) merger detected by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Since no electromagnetic counterpart was identified, whether the associated kilonova was too dim or the localization area too broad is still an open question. We simulate 28 BNS mergers with the chirp mass of GW190425 and mass ratio 1 ≤ q ≤ 1.67, using numerical-relativity simulations with finite-temperature, composition dependent equations of state (EOS) and neutrino radiation. The energy emitted in GWs is $$\lesssim 0.083\mathrm{\, M_\odot }c^2$$ with peak luminosity of 1.1–$$2.4\times ~10^{58}/(1+q)^2\, {\rm {erg \, s^{-1}}}$$. Dynamical ejecta and disc mass range between 5 × 10−6–10−3 and 10−5–$$0.1 \mathrm{\, M_\odot }$$, respectively. Asymmetric mergers, especially with stiff EOSs, unbind more matter and form heavier discs compared to equal mass binaries. The angular momentum of the disc is 8–$$10\mathrm{\, M_\odot }~GM_{\rm {disc}}/c$$ over three orders of magnitude in Mdisc. While the nucleosynthesis shows no peculiarity, the simulated kilonovae are relatively dim compared with GW170817. For distances compatible with GW190425, AB magnitudes are always dimmer than ∼20 mag for the B, r, and K bands, with brighter kilonovae associated to more asymmetric binaries and stiffer EOSs. We suggest that, even assuming a good coverage of GW190425’s sky location, the kilonova could hardly have been detected by present wide-field surveys and no firm constraints on the binary parameters or EOS can be argued from the lack of the detection. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, The Astrophysical Journal Letters)
    Abstract The astrophysical origin of over 90 compact binary mergers discovered by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories is an open question. While the unusual mass and spin of some of the discovered objects constrain progenitor scenarios, the observed mergers are consistent with multiple interpretations. A promising approach to solve this question is to consider the observed distributions of binary properties and compare them to expectations from different origin scenarios. Here we describe a new hierarchical population analysis framework to assess the relative contribution of different formation channels simultaneously. For this study we considered binary formation in active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks along with phenomenological models, but the same framework can be extended to other models. We find that high-mass and high-mass-ratio binaries appear more likely to have an AGN origin compared to having the same origin as lower-mass events. Future observations of high-mass black hole mergers could further disentangle the AGN component from other channels. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; (, Astronomy Reports)
    Due to the high-density nuclear matter equation of state (EOS) being as yet unknown, neutron stars (NSs) do not have a confirmed limiting “Chandrasekhar” type maximum mass. However, observations of NSs (PSR J1614-2230, PSR J0348+0432, PSR J0740+6620, PSR J0952–0607) indicate that the NS’s limiting mass, if there is any, could be well over 2M⊙. On the other hand, there seems to be an observational mass gap (of around 2.5−5M⊙ ) between the lightest black hole and the heaviest NS. Therefore, the “massive NSs” are prime candidates to fill that gap. Several NS EOSs have been proposed using both microscopic and phenomenological approaches. In this project, we look at a class of phenomenological nuclear matter EOSs—relativistic mean field models—and see what kind of NS is formed from them. We compute the max- imum mass supported by each model EOS to observe if the mass of the NS is indeed in the “massive” NS (>2M⊙) regime. We also observe the effects of including exotic particles (hyperons, Δs) in the NS EOS and how that affects the NS mass. However, only by introducing the magnetic field, i.e. for magnetized anisotro- pic NSs, we find the mass exceeding 2.5M⊙. Using tidal deformability constraints from gravitational wave observations, we place a further check on how physical the EOS and NSs are. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email