Gravitational waves from the Papaloizou-Pringle instability in black hole-torus systems

Abstract

Black hole (BH)--torus systems are promising candidates for the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), and also possible outcomes of the collapse of supermassive stars to supermassive black holes (SMBHs). By three-dimensional general relativistic numerical simulations, we show that an $m=1$ nonaxisymmetric instability grows for a wide range of self-gravitating tori orbiting BHs. The resulting nonaxisymmetric structure persists for a timescale much longer than the dynamical one, becoming a strong emitter of large amplitude, quasiperiodic gravitational waves. Our results indicate that both, the central engine of GRBs and newly formed SMBHs, can be strong gravitational wave sources observable by forthcoming ground-based and spacecraft detectors.

4 pages, 4 figure, to be published in PRL

References in corpus (6)

• Simulating coalescing compact binaries by a new code SACRA
• Relativistic Simulations of Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers: Effects of black-hole spin
• Black hole-neutron star mergers: effects of the orientation of the black hole spin
• Stability of general-relativistic accretion disks
• Exploring binary-neutron-star-merger scenario of short-gamma-ray bursts by gravitational-wave observation
• Influence of self-gravity on the runaway instability of black hole-torus systems

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Gamma Ray Bursts in the Swift-Fermi Era