Gaia BH1 and BH2 -- evolutionary models with overshooting of the black hole progenitors within the present-day binary separation
arXiv:2409.15899 · doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slae091
Abstract
Three black holes (BHs) in wide binaries - Gaia BH1, BH2 and BH3 - were recently discovered. The likely progenitors of the BHs were massive stars that experienced a supergiant phase, reaching radii of ~1000 Rsun, before collapsing to form the BH. Such radii are difficult to accommodate with the present-day orbits of BH1 and BH2 - with semi-major axes of 1.4 and 3.7 au, respectively. In this letter, we show that the maximal radii of the supergiants are not necessarily so large, and realistic stellar evolution models, with some assumed overshooting above the convective core into the radiative stellar envelope, produce substantially smaller maximal radii. The limited expansion of supergiants is consistent with the empirical Humphreys-Davidson limit - the absence of red supergiants above an upper luminosity limit, notably lower than the highest luminosity of main-sequence stars. We propose that the evolution that led to the formation of Gaia BH1 and BH2 simply did not involve an expansion to the cool supergiant phase.
5 pages, 5 figures. Published in MNRAS Letters
References in corpus (32)
- The Gaia mission
- Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
- Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Pulsating Variable Stars, Rotation, Convective Boundaries, and Energy Conservation
- Gaia Data Release 3: Stellar multiplicity, a teaser for the hidden treasure
- The Evolution of Massive Helium Stars Including Mass Loss
- A Sun-like star orbiting a black hole
- A red giant orbiting a black hole
- The spectroscopic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of Galactic massive stars
- An asteroseismic study of the beta Cephei star theta Ophiuchi: constraints on global stellar parameters and core overshooting
- Constraining mixing in massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
- Discovery of a dormant 33 solar-mass black hole in pre-release Gaia astrometry
- Towards a better understanding of the evolution of Wolf-Rayet stars and Type Ib/Ic supernova progenitors
- Metallicity-dependent wind parameter predictions for OB stars
- A new prescription for the mass-loss rates of WC and WO stars
- The excess of cool supergiants from contemporary stellar evolution models defies the metallicity-independent Humphreys-Davidson limit
- Convective boundary mixing in main-sequence stars: theory and empirical constraints
- A population of neutron star candidates in wide orbits from Gaia astrometry
- The CubeSpec space mission. I. Asteroseismology of massive stars from time series optical spectroscopy: science requirements and target list prioritisation
- Explaining the differences in massive star models from various simulations
- A study of convective core overshooting as a function of stellar mass based on two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations
- 3D hydrodynamic simulations of massive main-sequence stars. I. Dynamics and mixing of convection and internal gravity waves
- Dynamical formation of Gaia BH3 in the progenitor globular cluster of the ED-2 stream
- A neutron star candidate in a 2-year orbit
- The role of stellar expansion on the formation of gravitational wave sources
- 3D stellar evolution: hydrodynamic simulations of a complete burning phase in a massive star
- A systematic study of super-Eddington layers in the envelopes of massive stars
- Explodability fluctuations of massive stellar cores enable asymmetric compact object mergers such as GW190814
- ESPRESSO observations of Gaia BH1: high-precision orbital constraints and no evidence for an inner binary
- A Triple Scenario for the Formation of Wide Black Hole Binaries Such As Gaia BH1
- On the formation of a black hole in a low-metallicity binary
- The enigmatic origin of two dormant BH binaries: Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2
- A Model for Eruptive Mass Loss in Massive Stars