Hierarchical black hole mergers in young, globular and nuclear star clusters: the effect of metallicity, spin and cluster properties

Abstract

We explore hierarchical black hole (BH) mergers in nuclear star clusters (NSCs), globular clusters (GCs) and young star clusters (YSCs), accounting for both original and dynamically assembled binary BHs (BBHs). We find that the median mass of both first- and nth-generation dynamical mergers is larger in GCs and YSCs with respect to NSCs, because the lighter BHs are ejected by supernova kicks from the lower-mass clusters. Also, first- and nth-generation BH masses are strongly affected by the metallicity of the progenitor stars: the median mass of the primary BH of a nth-generation merger is $\sim 24-38$ M${}_{\odot }$ ($\sim 9-15$ M${}_{\odot }$) in metal-poor (metal-rich) NSCs. The maximum BH mass mainly depends on the escape velocity: BHs with mass up to several thousand M${}_{\odot }$ form in NSCs, while YSCs and GCs host BHs with mass up to several hundred M${}_{\odot }$. Furthermore, we calculate the fraction of mergers with at least one component in the pair-instability mass gap ($f_{\mathrm{PI}}$) and in the intermediate-mass BH regime ($f_{\mathrm{IMBH}}$). In the fiducial model for dynamical BBHs with metallicity $Z=0.002$, we find $f_{\mathrm{PI}}\approx 0.05$, $0.02$ and $0.007$ ($f_{\mathrm{IMBH}}\approx 0.01$, $0.002$ and $0.001$) in NSCs, GCs and YSCs, respectively. Both $f_{\mathrm{PI}}$ and $f_{\mathrm{IMBH}}$ drop by at least one order of magnitude at solar metallicity. Finally, we investigate the formation of GW190521 by assuming that it is either a nearly equal-mass BBH or an intermediate-mass ratio inspiral.

20 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (44)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Binary interaction dominates the evolution of massive stars
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter
• Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Large Merger Recoils and Spin Flips From Generic Black-Hole Binaries
• Gravitational waves from scattering of stellar-mass black holes in galactic nuclei
• The merger rate of primordial-black-hole binaries
• The Effect of Pair-Instability Mass Loss on Black Hole Mergers
• Mind the gap: The location of the lower edge of the pair instability supernovae black hole mass gap
• MOCCA-SURVEY Database I: Coalescing Binary Black Holes Originating From Globular Clusters
• Very massive stars, pair-instability supernovae and intermediate-mass black holes with the SEVN code
• Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor
• The Dynamical Evolution of Stellar Black Holes in Globular Clusters
• Merging black holes in young star clusters
• Dynamics of stellar black holes in young star clusters with different metallicities - II. Black hole-black hole binaries
• The Evolution of Massive Helium Stars Including Mass Loss
• On the final spin from the coalescence of two black holes
• Interaction of massive black hole binaries with their stellar environment: I. Ejection of hypervelocity stars
• The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes
• A Highly Spinning and Aligned Binary Black Hole Merger in the Advanced LIGO First Observing Run
• Hierarchical data-driven approach to fitting numerical relativity data for nonprecessing binary black holes with an application to final spin and radiated energy
• The cosmic merger rate of stellar black hole binaries from the Illustris simulation
• Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and their role in gravitational-wave generation
• Mergers of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in Nuclear Star Clusters
• AGN Disks Harden the Mass Distribution of Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers
• Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and their role in gravitational-wave generation II
• The properties of merging black holes and neutron stars across cosmic time
• Gravitational Wave Recoil and the Retention of Intermediate Mass Black Holes
• Very high redshift quasars and the rapid emergence of super-massive black holes
• GW190521 may be an intermediate mass ratio inspiral
• Polluting the pair-instability mass gap for binary black holes through super-Eddington accretion in isolated binaries
• Globular Cluster Systems in Nearby Dwarf Galaxies: I. HST/ACS Observations and Dynamical Properties of Globular Clusters at Low Environmental Density
• Repeated mergers and ejection of black holes within nuclear star clusters
• Fingerprints of binary black hole formation channels encoded in the mass and spin of merger remnants
• Black hole-neutron star mergers from triples
• Self-consistent simulations of Nuclear Cluster formation through Globular Cluster orbital decay and merging
• The Stellar Merger Scenario for Black Holes in the Pair-instability Gap
• Dependence of Gravitational Wave Transient Rates on Cosmic Star Formation and Metallicity Evolution History
• Generation of massive stellar black holes by rapid gas accretion in primordial dense clusters
• Spin misalignment of black hole binaries from young star clusters: implications for the origin of gravitational waves events

Cited by in corpus (106)

• Science with the Einstein Telescope: a comparison of different designs
• Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
• GWTC-2.1: Deep Extended Catalog of Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• New binary black hole mergers in the LIGO--Virgo O3a data
• GW190521 as a dynamical capture of two nonspinning black holes
• The Cosmic Evolution of Binary Black Holes in Young, Globular and Nuclear Star Clusters: Rates, Masses, Spins and Mixing Fractions
• Compact object mergers: exploring uncertainties from stellar and binary evolution with SEVN
• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Repeated mergers, mass-gap black holes, and formation of intermediate-mass black holes in nuclear star clusters
• Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• Observing intermediate-mass black holes and the upper--stellar-mass gap with LIGO and Virgo
• Intermediate mass black holes from stellar mergers in young star clusters
• Understanding the high-mass binary black hole population from stable mass transfer and super-Eddington accretion in BPASS
• The Formation of Intermediate Mass Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei
• Merger rate density of binary black holes through isolated Population I, II, III and extremely metal-poor binary star evolution
• Black hole mergers in compact star clusters and massive black hole formation beyond the mass-gap
• Gravitational Wave Astronomy With TianQin
• Deep learning and Bayesian inference of gravitational-wave populations: Hierarchical black-hole mergers
• Quiescent and active galactic nuclei as factories of merging compact objects in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy
• Impact of gas hardening on the population properties of hierarchical black hole mergers in AGN disks
• Compact Binary Coalescences: Astrophysical Processes and Lessons Learned
• (H)DPGMM: A Hierarchy of Dirichlet Process Gaussian Mixture Models for the inference of the black hole mass function
• Dynamics of binary black holes in low-mass young star clusters
• Potential Subpopulations and Assembling Tendency of the Merging Black Holes
• Limits on hierarchical black hole mergers from the most negative ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}$ systems
• Eccentric black hole mergers via three-body interactions in young, globular, and nuclear star clusters
• New binary black hole mergers in the LIGO-Virgo O3b data
• Gravitational wave of intermediate-mass black holes in Population III star clusters
• The Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna: Mission Studies and Science Case
• Evidence for the evolution of black hole mass function with redshift
• Isolated and dynamical black hole mergers with \texttt{B-POP}: the role of star formation and dynamics, star cluster evolution, natal kicks, mass and spins, and hierarchical mergers
• Hierarchical binary black hole mergers in globular clusters: mass function and evolution with redshift
• GW241011 and GW241110: Exploring Binary Formation and Fundamental Physics with Asymmetric, High-Spin Black Hole Coalescence
• Dynamics of binary black holes in young star clusters: the impact of cluster mass and long-term evolution
• First gravitational-wave search for intermediate-mass black hole mergers with higher order harmonics
• Looking for the parents of LIGO's black holes
• Formation of black holes in the pair-instability mass gap: Hydrodynamical simulations of a head-on massive star collision
• GW190521 formation via three-body encounters in young massive star clusters
• Growing Black Holes through Successive Mergers in Galactic Nuclei: I. Methods and First Results
• Black hole - black hole total merger mass and the origin of LIGO/Virgo sources
• Reconstructing the Genealogy of LIGO-Virgo Black Holes
• Constraints on the contributions to the observed binary black hole population from individual evolutionary pathways in isolated binary evolution
• High mass but low spin: an exclusion region to rule out hierarchical black-hole mergers as a mechanism to populate the pair-instability mass gap
• Avoiding a Cluster Catastrophe: Retention Efficiency and the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum
• The Redshift Evolution of the Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution from Dense Star Clusters
• An absence of binary companions to Wolf-Rayet stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud: implications for mass loss and black hole masses at low metallicity
• Close Encounters of Stars with Stellar-mass Black Hole Binaries
• Predictions of a simple parametric model of hierarchical black hole mergers
• Partial Tidal Disruption of Main-Sequence Stars by Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
• Demographics of Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Dense Star Clusters
• Mapping the Likelihood of GW190521 with Diverse Mass and Spin Priors
• The Black Hole Mass Function Across Cosmic Times I. Stellar Black Holes and Light Seed Distribution
• Gravitational waves from the remnants of the first stars in nuclear star clusters
• GW200208_222617 as an eccentric black-hole binary merger: properties and astrophysical implications
• On the Angular Momentum Transport Efficiency within the Star Constrained from Gravitational-wave Observations
• Formation of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei II: retention and growth of seed intermediate-mass black holes
• Resolving Black Hole Family Issues Among the Massive Ancestors of Very High-Spin Gravitational-Wave Events Like GW231123
• Mergers of supermassive and intermediate-mass black holes in galactic nuclei from disruptions of star clusters
• Merging Hierarchical Triple Black Hole Systems with Intermediate-mass Black Holes in Population III Star Clusters
• Gravitational waves from mergers of Population III binary black holes: roles played by two evolution channels
• Merging binary black holes formed through double-core evolution
• Consistent eccentricities for gravitational wave astronomy: Resolving discrepancies between astrophysical simulations and waveform models
• No evidence that the binary black hole mass distribution evolves with redshift
• Formation and evolution of binary black holes in $N$-body simulations of star clusters with up to two million stars
• Understanding the progenitor formation galaxies of merging binary black holes
• Binary black hole mergers from Population III star clusters
• Hunting intermediate-mass black holes with LISA binary radial velocity measurements
• One to many: comparing single gravitational-wave events to astrophysical populations
• New insights on binary black hole formation channels after GWTC-2: young star clusters versus isolated binaries
• Constraining hierarchical mergers of binary black holes detectable with LIGO-Virgo
• Evolution of a black hole cluster in full general relativity
• What's in a binary black hole's mass parameter?
• Comparing hierarchical black hole mergers in star clusters and active galactic nuclei
• Reexamining Evidence of a Pair-Instability Mass Gap in the Binary Black Hole Population
• Central X-ray point-sources found to be abundant in low-mass, late-type galaxies predicted to contain an intermediate-mass black hole
• Study on the detectability of gravitational radiation from single-binary encounters between black holes in nuclear star cluster: the case of hyperbolic flybys
• Premerger localization of intermediate mass binary black holes with LISA and prospects of joint observations with Athena and LSST
• Exploring the Gas-Phase Metallicity Gradients of Star-forming Galaxies at Cosmic Noon
• Close encounters of black hole - star binaries with stellar-mass black holes
• Growth of Massive Black Hole Seeds by Migration of Stellar and Primordial Black Holes: Gravitational Waves and Stochastic Background
• Black hole mass function shift in proto-stellar-clusters driven by gas accretion
• Biased parameter inference of eccentric, spin-precessing binary black holes
• The origin channels of hierarchical binary black hole mergers in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA O1, O2, and O3 runs
• Distinguishing the Origin of Eccentric Black Hole Mergers with Gravitational-wave Spin Measurements
• Great Balls of FIRE IV. The contribution of massive star clusters to the astrophysical population of merging binary black holes
• A complete measurement of a black-hole recoil through higher-order gravitational-wave modes
• Imprints of massive black-hole binaries on neighbouring decihertz gravitational-wave sources
• Black Hole Merger Rates in AGN: contribution from gas-captured binaries
• Identification of Intermediate-mass Black Hole Candidates Among a Sample of Sd Galaxies
• A follow-up on intermediate-mass black hole candidates in the second LIGO-Virgo observing run with the Bayes Coherence Ratio
• Gravitational wave background from primordial black holes in globular clusters
• Gravitational wave signals from long lasting binary-single black hole encounters
• On the Astrophysical Origin of Binary Black Hole Subpopulations: A Tale of Three Channels?
• Are all models wrong? Falsifying binary formation models in gravitational-wave astronomy
• The Nature of Gravitational Wave Events with Host Environment Escape Velocities
• Not all roads lead to merger: AGN disc properties influence the interactions of highly unequal mass black holes
• Population Synthesis of Gravitational Wave Sources
• An analytical joint prior for effective spins for inference on the spin distribution of binary black holes
• Spin-up and spin distribution of stellar black holes grown by gas accretion in proto-stellar clusters
• The role of migration traps in the formation of binary black holes in AGN disks
• Hierarchical Merger of Primordial Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• A Study of Systematics on the Cosmological Inference of the Hubble Constant from Gravitational Wave Standard Sirens
• Gravitational background from dynamical binaries and detectability with 2G detectors
• Host galaxies and electromagnetic counterparts to binary neutron star mergers across the cosmic time: Detectability of GW170817-like events
• Capability for detection of GW190521-like binary black holes with TianQin
• Merger rates of intermediate-mass black hole binaries in nuclear star clusters