Formation and evolution of binary black holes in $N$-body simulations of star clusters with up to two million stars

Abstract

Understanding binary black hole (BBH) dynamics in dense star clusters is key to interpreting the gravitational wave detections by LIGO and Virgo. Here, we perform $N$-body simulations of star clusters, focusing on BBH formation mechanisms, dynamical evolution and merging properties. We explore a wide parameter space of initial conditions, with cluster masses ranging from $10^4$ to $10^6{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$, densities from $10^3$ to $10^5{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }\mathrm{p}{\mathrm{c}}^{-3}$, and up to $100\%$ of massive stars in binaries. We show that most BBH mergers originate from the primordial binary population rather than being dynamically assembled, and that the evolution towards merger for most of these binaries is not significantly altered by dynamical encounters. As a result, the overall number of BBH mergers from the $N$-body simulations is nearly identical to that obtained when the same stellar population is evolved in isolation. Contrary to theoretical expectations, nearly all dynamically formed BBH mergers occur when the binary is still bound to its host cluster, with $\simeq 90\%$ of all dynamical mergers occurring within the cluster core region. In about half of these mergers the binary is part of a stable black hole-triple system. In one model, stellar mergers lead to the formation of a $\simeq 200{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ black hole, which then grows to $\simeq 300{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ through black hole mergers. Our study highlights the importance of detailed $N$-body simulations in capturing the evolution of black hole populations in dense clusters and challenges conclusions based on semi-analytical and Monte Carlo methods.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

References in corpus (115)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• Binary interaction dominates the evolution of massive stars
• Evolution of binary stars and the effect of tides on binary populations
• Comprehensive analytic formulae for stellar evolution as a function of mass and metallicity
• A statistical study of 233 pulsar proper motions
• Mind your Ps and Qs: the Interrelation between Period (P) and Mass-ratio (Q) Distributions of Binary Stars
• Binary Black Hole Mergers in the first Advanced LIGO Observing Run
• Common Envelope Evolution: Where we stand and how we can move forward
• Compact Remnant Mass Function: Dependence on the Explosion Mechanism and Metallicity
• A Comprehensive Study of Binary Compact Objects as Gravitational Wave Sources: Evolutionary Channels, Rates, and Physical Properties
• The formation of massive black holes through collision runaway in dense young star clusters
• Double Compact Objects I: The Significance Of The Common Envelope On Merger Rates
• Star Clusters Across Cosmic Time
• A new route towards merging massive black holes
• Mass Limits For Black Hole Formation
• Binary Black Hole Mergers from Globular Clusters: Masses, Merger Rates, and the Impact of Stellar Evolution
• Rapid and Bright Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Merging binary black holes formed through chemically homogeneous evolution in short-period stellar binaries
• Assisted Inspirals of Stellar Mass Black Holes Embedded in AGN Disks: Solving the "Final AU Problem"
• The dynamical evolution of massive black hole binaries - I. Hardening in a fixed stellar background
• Production of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Globular Clusters
• Secular evolution of compact binaries near massive black holes: gravitational wave sources and other exotica
• Merging black hole binaries in galactic nuclei: implications for advanced-LIGO detections
• Star cluster ecology IVa: Dissection of an open star cluster---photometry
• The Effect of Pair-Instability Mass Loss on Black Hole Mergers
• The evolutionary roads leading to low effective spins, high black hole masses, and O1/O2 rates of LIGO/Virgo binary black holes
• The progenitors of compact-object binaries: impact of metallicity, common envelope and natal kicks
• MOCCA-SURVEY Database I: Coalescing Binary Black Holes Originating From Globular Clusters
• The Kozai Mechanism and the Evolution of Binary Supermassive Black Holes
• Eccentric Black Hole Mergers Forming in Globular Clusters
• A Catalog of Globular Cluster Systems: What Determines the Size of a Galaxy's Globular Cluster Population?
• Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor
• The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers
• On stellar-mass black hole mergers in AGN disks detectable with LIGO
• The Dynamical Evolution of Stellar Black Holes in Globular Clusters
• Massive black hole binaries from runaway collisions: the impact of metallicity
• Merging black hole binaries with the SEVN code
• Merging black holes in young star clusters
• Post-Newtonian Dynamics in Dense Star Clusters: Highly-Eccentric, Highly-Spinning, and Repeated Binary Black Hole Mergers
• Post-Newtonian Dynamics in Dense Star Clusters: Formation, Masses, and Merger Rates of Highly-Eccentric Black Hole Binaries
• Eccentric Black Hole Mergers in Dense Star Clusters: The Role of Binary-Binary Encounters
• The DRAGON simulations: globular cluster evolution with a million stars
• Dynamical Formation of the GW150914 Binary Black Hole
• Four-Body Effects in Globular Cluster Black Hole Coalescence
• NBODY6++GPU: Ready for the gravitational million-body problem
• Black hole growth through hierarchical black hole mergers in dense star clusters: implications for gravitational wave detections
• Dynamical evolution of black hole sub-systems in idealised star clusters
• Forming short-period Wolf-Rayet X-ray binaries and double black holes through stable mass transfer
• Mass segregation and fractal substructure in young massive clusters: (I) the McLuster code and method calibration
• Black Hole Mergers From Globular Clusters Observable by LISA I: Eccentric Sources Originating From Relativistic $N$-body Dynamics
• Stability of mass transfer from massive giants: double black-hole binary formation and ultra-luminous X-ray sources
• Mergers of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in Nuclear Star Clusters
• Monte-Carlo Simulations of Globular Cluster Evolution - I. Method and Test Calculations
• Formation of GW190521 from stellar evolution: the impact of the hydrogen-rich envelope, dredge-up and ${}^{12}$C($\alpha$, $\gamma$)${}^{16}$O rate on the pair-instability black hole mass gap
• Hierarchical black hole mergers in young, globular and nuclear star clusters: the effect of metallicity, spin and cluster properties
• Impact of Massive Binary Star and Cosmic Evolution on Gravitational Wave Observations I: Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers
• Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and their role in gravitational-wave generation II
• Monte Carlo Simulations of Globular Cluster Evolution. IV. Direct Integration of Strong Interactions
• PeTar: a high-performance N-body code for modeling massive collisional stellar systems
• MOCCA code for star cluster simulations - I. Blue Stragglers, first results
• Implementation and performance of FDPS: A Framework Developing Parallel Particle Simulation Codes
• Binary black holes in young star clusters: the impact of metallicity
• The Distribution of Recoil Velocities from Merging Black Holes
• BSE versus StarTrack: implementations of new wind, remnant-formation, and natal-kick schemes in NBODY7 and their astrophysical consequences
• Redshift Evolution of the Black Hole Merger Rate from Globular Clusters
• Discovery of a dormant 33 solar-mass black hole in pre-release Gaia astrometry
• Gravitational Wave Recoil and the Retention of Intermediate Mass Black Holes
• Black Hole Binaries Dynamically Formed in Globular Clusters
• Cosmic Rates of Black Hole Mergers and Pair-Instability Supernovae from Chemically Homogeneous Binary Evolution
• Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the Cluster Monte Carlo Code
• Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters IV: updated stellar-evolutionary and black hole spin models and comparisons with the LIGO-Virgo O1/O2 merger-event data
• Intermediate Mass Black Hole Formation in compact Young Massive Star Clusters
• Population synthesis of black hole binary mergers from star clusters
• Dependency of dynamical ejections of O stars on the masses of very young 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
• Mergers and ejections of black holes in globular clusters
• A Parallel Monte Carlo Code for Simulating Collisional N-body Systems
• Evolution of Galactic Nuclei with 10 $M_{\odot }$ Black Holes
• Binary black hole mergers: formation and populations
• Merger rate of black hole binaries from globular clusters: theoretical error bars and comparison to gravitational wave data from GWTC-2
• Basic N-Body Modelling of the Evolution of Globular Clusters. I. Time Scaling
• Million-Body Star Cluster Simulations: Comparisons between Monte Carlo and Direct $N$-body
• Binary Black Hole Mergers from Globular Clusters: the Impact of Globular Cluster Properties
• Intermediate mass black holes from stellar mergers in young star clusters
• Chemically Homogeneous Evolution: A rapid population synthesis approach
• A slow-down time-transformed symplectic integrator for solving the few-body problem
• A stochastic Monte Carlo approach to model real star cluster evolution, II. Self-consistent models and primordial binaries
• Particle-Particle Particle-Tree: A Direct-Tree Hybrid Scheme for Collisional N-Body Simulations
• Complete ejection of OB stars from very young star clusters and the formation of multiple populations
• Common envelope evolution of eccentric binaries
• Merging stellar and intermediate-mass black holes in dense clusters: implications for LIGO, LISA and the next generation of gravitational wave detectors
• MSTAR -- a fast parallelised algorithmically regularised integrator with minimum spanning tree coordinates
• Fortran interface layer of the framework for developing particle simulator FDPS
• Dynamics of binary black holes in low-mass young star clusters
• 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
• Dynamics of binary black holes in young star clusters: the impact of cluster mass and long-term evolution
• Accelerated FDPS --- Algorithms to Use Accelerators with FDPS
• 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
• The impact of primordial binary on the dynamical evolution of intermediate massive star clusters
• FROST: a momentum-conserving CUDA implementation of a hierarchical fourth-order forward symplectic integrator
• Eccentric Mergers in AGN Discs: Influence of the Supermassive Black-Hole on Three-body Interactions
• Stable mass transfer can explain massive binary black hole mergers with a high spin component
• Binary black hole mergers from young massive clusters in the pair-instability supernova mass gap
• BIFROST: simulating compact subsystems in star clusters using a hierarchical fourth-order forward symplectic integrator code
• MOCCA: Dynamics and evolution of binary stars of multiple stellar populations in tidally filling and underfilling globular star clusters
• PENTACLE: Parallelized Particle-Particle Particle-Tree Code for Planet Formation
• Merging binary black holes formed through double-core evolution
• Dynamically Formed Black Hole Binaries: In-Cluster Versus Ejected Mergers
• MOCCA-Survey Database: Extra Galactic Globular Clusters. III. The population of black holes in Milky Way and Andromeda-like galaxies

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Evolution of a black hole cluster in full general relativity
• What Determines the Maximum Mass of AGN-assisted Black Hole Mergers?
• The more accurately the metal-dependent star formation rate is modeled, the larger the predicted excess of binary black hole mergers
• Shadows of the Colossus: Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in a 10-million-body Globular Cluster Simulation
• Interactions among binary black holes in star clusters: Eccentric gravitational wave captures and triple formation
• The Nature of Gravitational Wave Events with Host Environment Escape Velocities
• FROST-CLUSTERS -- III. Metallicity-dependent intermediate mass black hole formation by runaway collisions in dense star clusters
• Identifying Host Galaxies of Binary Black Hole Mergers with Next-Generation Gravitational Wave Detector Networks