paper

Long-Term Evolution of Slowly Rotating Collapsar in Special Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics

arXiv:0905.2006 · doi:10.1088/0004-637X/704/1/354

Abstract

We present our numerical results of two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the collapse of rotating massive stars in light of the collapsar model of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Pushed by recent evolution calculations of GRB progenitors, we focus on lower angular momentum of the central core than the ones taken mostly in previous studies. By performing special relativistic simulations including both realistic equation of state and neutrino coolings, we follow a unprecedentedly long-term evolution of the slowly rotating collapsars up to 10 s, accompanied by the formation of jets and accretion disks. Our results show that for the GRB progenitors to function as collapsars, there is a critical initial angular momentum, below which matter is quickly swallowed to the central objects, no accretion disks and no MHD outflows are formed. When larger than the criteria, we find the launch of the MHD jets in the following two ways. For models with stronger initial magnetic fields, the magnetic pressure amplified inside the accretion disk can drive the MHD outflows, which makes the strong magnetic explosions like a 'magnetic tower' (type II). For the models with weaker initial magnetic fields, the magnetic tower stalls first and the subsequent MHD outflows are produced by some eventual inflows of the accreting material from the equator to the polar regions (type I). Regardless of type I or II, the jets can attain only mildly relativistic speeds with the explosion energy less than $10^{49} \erg$, which could possibly be related to the X-ray flashes. Due to high opacity for neutrinos inside the disk, we find that the luminosities of and become almost comparable, which is advantageous for making the energy deposition rate larger.

53 pages with 19 figures

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