Avoiding a Cluster Catastrophe: Retention Efficiency and the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum
arXiv:2205.08549 · doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ac853d
Abstract
The population of binary black hole mergers identified through gravitational waves has uncovered unexpected features in the intrinsic properties of black holes in the universe. One particularly surprising and exciting result is the possible existence of black holes in the pair-instability mass gap, . Dense stellar environments can populate this region of mass space through hierarchical mergers, with the retention efficiency of black hole merger products strongly dependent on the escape velocity of the host environment. We use simple toy models to represent hierarchical merger scenarios in various dynamical environments. We find that hierarchical mergers in environments with high escape velocities are efficiently retained. If such environments dominate the binary black hole merger rate, this would lead to an abundance of high-mass mergers that is potentially incompatible with the empirical mass spectrum from the current catalog of binary black hole mergers. Models that efficiently generate hierarchical mergers, and contribute significantly to the observed population, must therefore be tuned to avoid a "cluster catastrophe" of overproducing binary black hole mergers within and above the pair-instability mass gap.
15 pages, 6 figures, published in ApJ Letters
References in corpus (34)
- The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
- GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
- GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of
- Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
- Slowing the Spins of Stellar Cores
- One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
- Merging black holes in young star clusters
- Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
- The Evolution of Massive Helium Stars Including Mass Loss
- 3-OGC: Catalog of gravitational waves from compact-binary mergers
- The Pair-Instability Mass Gap for Black Holes
- Intermediate mass black holes in AGN disks II. Model predictions & observational constraints
- AGN Disks Harden the Mass Distribution of Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers
- Hierarchical black hole mergers in young, globular and nuclear star clusters: the effect of metallicity, spin and cluster properties
- Evidence for hierarchical black hole mergers in the second LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave catalog
- Mass-gap Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei
- The Cosmic Evolution of Binary Black Holes in Young, Globular and Nuclear Star Clusters: Rates, Masses, Spins and Mixing Fractions
- Minding the gap: GW190521 as a straddling binary
- Joint constraints on the field-cluster mixing fraction, common envelope efficiency, and globular cluster radii from a population of binary hole mergers via deep learning
- GW190521 may be an intermediate mass ratio inspiral
- Repeated mergers and ejection of black holes within nuclear star clusters
- Binary black hole mergers in AGN accretion discs: gravitational wave rate density estimates
- Intermediate-mass Black Holes from High Massive-star Binary Fractions in Young Star Clusters
- Repeated mergers, mass-gap black holes, and formation of intermediate-mass black holes in nuclear star clusters
- 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
- GW190412 as a Third-Generation Black Hole Merger from a Super Star Cluster
- Black hole mergers of AGN origin in LIGO/Virgo's O1-O3a observing periods
- Remnant Black Hole Kicks and Implications for Hierarchical Mergers
- Looking for the parents of LIGO's black holes
- Black Hole Leftovers: The Remnant Population from Binary Black Hole Mergers
- 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
- Time-dependent stellar-mass binary black hole mergers in AGN disks: Mass distribution of hierarchical mergers
- Implications of recoil kicks for black hole mergers from LIGO/Virgo catalogs
Cited by in corpus (21)
- Four eccentric mergers increase the evidence that LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA's binary black holes form dynamically
- The Science of the Einstein Telescope
- Impact of gas hardening on the population properties of hierarchical black hole mergers in AGN disks
- Evidence for the evolution of black hole mass function with redshift
- Massive black hole assembly in nuclear star clusters
- Reconstructing the Genealogy of LIGO-Virgo Black Holes
- Predictions of a simple parametric model of hierarchical black hole mergers
- Demographics of Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Dense Star Clusters
- Intermediate-mass Black Holes on the Run from Young Star Clusters
- Spin Doctors: How to diagnose a hierarchical merger origin
- No evidence that the binary black hole mass distribution evolves with redshift
- Revealing the - Correlation among Coalescing Binary Black Holes and Tentative Evidence for AGN-driven Hierarchical Mergers
- Comparing hierarchical black hole mergers in star clusters and active galactic nuclei
- Signatures of a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers in the GWTC-4 gravitational-wave dataset
- The origin channels of hierarchical binary black hole mergers in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA O1, O2, and O3 runs
- Observability of spin precession in the presence of a black-hole remnant kick
- On the Astrophysical Origin of Binary Black Hole Subpopulations: A Tale of Three Channels?
- Gravitational wave inference of star cluster properties from intermediate-mass black hole mergers
- Minimum gas mass accreted by spinning intermediate-mass black holes in stellar clusters
- The role of migration traps in the formation of binary black holes in AGN disks
- Pushing spectral siren cosmology into the third-generation era: a blinded mock data challenge