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It has been suggested that strongly magnetized and rapidly rotating protoneutron stars (PNSs) may produce long duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) originating from stellar core collapse. We explore the steady-state properties and heavy element nucleosynthesis in neutrino-driven winds from such PNSs whose magnetic axis is generally misaligned with the axis of rotation. We consider a wide variety of central engine properties such as surface dipole field strength, initial rotation period, and magnetic obliquity to show that heavy element nuclei can be synthesized in the radially expanding wind. This process is facilitated provided the outflow is Poynting-flux dominated such that its low entropy and fast expansion time-scale enables heavy nuclei to form in a more efficient manner as compared to the equivalent thermal GRB outflows. We also examine the acceleration and survival of these heavy nuclei and show that they can reach sufficiently high energies ≳ 1020 eV within the same physical regions that are also responsible for powering gamma-ray emission, primarily through magnetic dissipation processes. Although these magnetized outflows generally fail to achieve the production of elements heavier than lanthanides for our explored electron fraction range 0.4–0.6, we show that they are more than capable of synthesizing nuclei near and beyondmore »iron peak elements.

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Neutrinos are copiously emitted by neutron star mergers, due to the high temperatures reached by dense matter during the merger and its aftermath. Neutrinos influence the merger dynamics and shape the properties of the ejecta, including the resultingr-process nucleosynthesis and kilonova emission. In this work, we analyse neutrino emission from a large sample of binary neutron star merger simulations in Numerical Relativity, covering a broad range of initial masses, nuclear equation of state and viscosity treatments. We extract neutrino luminosities and mean energies, and compute quantities of interest such as the peak values, peak broadnesses, time averages and decrease time scales. We provide a systematic description of such quantities, including their dependence on the initial parameters of the system. We find that for equal-mass systems the total neutrino luminosity (several$$10^{53}{\hbox {erg}~{\hbox {s}}^{-1}}$$${10}^{53}\text{erg}{\text{s}}^{-1}$) decreases as the reduced tidal deformability increases, as a consequence of the less violent merger dynamics. Similarly, tidal disruption in asymmetric mergers leads to systematically smaller luminosities. Peak luminosities can be twice as large as the average ones. Electron antineutrino luminosities dominate (initially by a factor of 2-3) over electron neutrino ones, while electron neutrinos and heavy flavour neutrinos have similar luminosities. Mean energies are nearly constantmore »in time and independent on the binary parameters. Their values reflect the different decoupling temperature inside the merger remnant. Despite present uncertainties in neutrino modelling, our results provide a broad and physically grounded characterisation of neutrino emission, and they can serve as a reference point to develop more sophisticated neutrino transport schemes.

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We develop a method to compute synthetic kilonova light curves that combine numerical relativity simulations of neutron star mergers and the SNEC radiation–hydrodynamics code. We describe our implementation of initial and boundary conditions, r-process heating, and opacities for kilonova simulations. We validate our approach by carefully checking that energy conservation is satisfied and by comparing the SNEC results with those of two semi-analytic light-curve models. We apply our code to the calculation of colour light curves for three binaries having different mass ratios (equal and unequal mass) and different merger outcome (short-lived and long-lived remnants). We study the sensitivity of our results to hydrodynamic effects, nuclear physics uncertainties in the heating rates, and duration of the merger simulations. We find that hydrodynamics effects are typically negligible and that homologous expansion is a good approximation in most cases. However, pressure forces can amplify the impact of uncertainties in the radioactive heating rates. We also study the impact of shocks possibly launched into the outflows by a relativistic jet. None of our models match AT2017gfo, the kilonova in GW170817. This points to possible deficiencies in our merger simulations and kilonova models that neglect non-LTE effects and possible additional energy injection frommore »the merger remnant and to the need to go beyond the assumption of spherical symmetry adopted in this work.

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We present a new moment-based energy-integrated neutrino transport code for neutron star merger simulations in general relativity. In the merger context, ours is the first code to include Doppler effects at all orders in υ/c, retaining all non-linear neutrino–matter coupling terms. The code is validated with a stringent series of tests. We show that the inclusion of full neutrino–matter coupling terms is necessary to correctly capture the trapping of neutrinos in relativistically moving media, such as in differentially rotating merger remnants. We perform preliminary simulations proving the robustness of the scheme in simulating ab-initio mergers to black hole collapse and long-term neutron star remnants up to ${\sim }70\,$ ms. The latter is the longest dynamical space-time, 3D, general relativistic simulations with full neutrino transport to date. We compare results obtained at different resolutions and using two different closures for the moment scheme. We do not find evidences of significant out-of-thermodynamic equilibrium effects, such as bulk viscosity, on the post-merger dynamics or gravitational wave emission. Neutrino luminosities and average energies are in good agreement with theory expectations and previous simulations by other groups using similar schemes. We compare dynamical and early wind ejecta properties obtained with M1 and with ourmore »older neutrino treatment. We find that the M1 results have systematically larger proton fractions. However, the differences in the nucleosynthesis yields are modest. This work sets the basis for future detailed studies spanning a wider set of neutrino reactions, binaries, and equations of state.

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ABSTRACT Luminosity evolution of some stripped-envelope supernovae such as Type I superluminous supernovae is difficult to explain by the canonical 56Ni nuclear decay heating. A popular alternative heating source is rapid spin-down of strongly magnetized rapidly rotating neutron stars (magnetars). Recent observations have indicated that Type I superluminous supernovae often have bumpy light curves with multiple luminosity peaks. The cause of bumpy light curves is unknown. In this study, we investigate the possibility that the light-curve bumps are caused by variations of the thermal energy injection from magnetar spin-down. We find that a temporal increase in the thermal energy injection can lead to multiple luminosity peaks. The multiple luminosity peaks caused by the variable thermal energy injection is found to be accompanied by significant increase in photospheric temperature, and photospheric radii are not significantly changed. We show that the bumpy light curves of SN 2015bn and SN 2019stc can be reproduced by temporarily increasing magnetar spin-down energy input by a factor of 2–3 for 5–20 d. However, not all the light-curve bumps are accompanied by the clear photospheric temperature increase as predicted by our synthetic models. In particular, the secondary light-curve bump of SN 2019stc is accompanied by a temporal increase in photospheric radii rather thanmore »temperature, which is not seen in our synthetic models. We therefore conclude that not all the light-curve bumps observed in luminous supernovae are caused by the variable thermal energy injection from magnetar spin-down and some bumps are likely caused by a different mechanism.« less

Abstract The joint detection of gravitational waves and the gamma-ray counterpart of a binary neutron star merger event, GW170817, unambiguously validates the connection between short gamma-ray bursts and compact binary object (CBO) mergers. We focus on a special scenario where short gamma-ray bursts produced by CBO mergers are embedded in disks of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and we investigate the γ -ray emission produced in the internal dissipation region via synchrotron, synchrotron self-Compton, and external inverse Compton (EIC) processes. In this scenario, isotropic thermal photons from the AGN disks contribute to the EIC component. We show that a low-density cavity can be formed in the migration traps, leading to the embedded mergers producing successful GRB jets. We find that the EIC component would dominate the GeV emission for typical CBO mergers with an isotropic-equivalent luminosity of L j ,iso = 10 48.5 erg s −1 that are located close to the central supermassive black hole. Considering a long-lasting jet of duration T dur ∼ 10 2 –10 3 s, we find that the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be able to detect its 25–100 GeV emission out to a redshift z = 1.0. In the optimistic case, it ismore »possible to detect the on-axis extended emission simultaneously with GWs within one decade using MAGIC, H.E.S.S., VERITAS, CTA, and LHAASO-WCDA. Early diagnosis of prompt emissions with Fermi-GBM and HAWC can provide valuable directional information for the follow-up observations.« less

ABSTRACT Extremely bright coherent radio bursts with millisecond duration, reminiscent of cosmological fast radio bursts, were codetected with anomalously-hard X-ray bursts from a Galactic magnetar SGR 1935 + 2154. We investigate the possibility that the event was triggered by the magnetic energy injection inside the magnetosphere, thereby producing magnetically-trapped fireball (FB) and relativistic outflows simultaneously. The thermal component of the X-ray burst is consistent with a trapped FB with an average temperature of ∼200–300 keV and size of ∼105 cm. Meanwhile, the non-thermal component of the X-ray burst and the coherent radio burst may arise from relativistic outflows. We calculate the dynamical evolution of the outflow, launched with an energy budget of 1039–1040 erg comparable to that for the trapped FB, for different initial baryon load η and magnetization σ0. If hard X-ray and radio bursts are both produced by the energy dissipation of the outflow, the outflow properties are constrained by combining the conditions for photon escape and the intrinsic timing offset ≲ 10 ms among radio and X-ray burst spikes. We show that the hard X-ray burst must be generated at rX ≳ 108 cm from the magnetar, irrespective of the emission mechanism. Moreover, we find that the outflow quickly accelerates upmore »to a Lorentz factor of 102 ≲ Γ ≲ 103 by the time it reaches the edge of the magnetosphere and the dissipation occurs at 1012 cm ≲ rradio, X ≲ 1014 cm. Our results imply either extremely-clean (η ≳ 104) or highly-magnetized (σ0 ≳ 103) outflows, which might be consistent with the rarity of the phenomenon.« less