Producing ultra-strong magnetic fields in neutron star mergers

Abstract

We report an extremely rapid mechanism for magnetic field amplification during the merger of a binary neutron star system. This has implications for the production of the short class of Gamma-Ray Bursts, which recent observations suggest may originate in such mergers. In detailed magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the merger process, the fields are amplified via Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities beyond magnetar field strength and may therefore represent the strongest magnetic fields in the Universe. The amplification occurs in the shear layer which forms between the neutron stars and on a time scale of only 1 millisecond, i.e. long before the remnant can collapse into a black hole.

14 pages, 4 figures, accepted to Science. Version with high resolution figures + animations can be found at http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/dprice/research/nsmag/ or http://www.faculty.iu-bremen.de/srosswog/Magnetic_NSM/

Cited by in corpus (20)

• SPLASH: An interactive visualisation tool for Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulations
• Accurate evolutions of inspiralling neutron-star binaries: prompt and delayed collapse to black hole
• Neutrino signatures and the neutrino-driven wind in Binary Neutron Star Mergers
• The impact of magnetic fields on single and binary star formation
• Time-Dependent Models of Accretion Disks Formed from Compact Object Mergers
• Magnetized Neutron Star Mergers and Gravitational Wave Signals
• Fallback accretion in the aftermath of a compact binary merger
• WhiskyMHD: a new numerical code for general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics
• The X-ray afterglow flat segment in short GRB 051221A: Energy injection from a millisecond magnetar?
• Evolving black hole-neutron star binaries in general relativity using pseudospectral and finite difference methods
• MAGMA: a 3D, Lagrangian magnetohydrodynamics code for merger applications
• Can magnetic fields be detected during the inspiral of binary neutron stars?
• A new general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics code for dynamical spacetimes
• Quasiequilibrium black hole-neutron star binaries in general relativity
• The origin of long-period X-ray pulsars
• A two component jet model for the X-ray afterglow flat segment in short GRB 051221A
• Are short gamma-ray bursts collimated? GRB050709, a flare but no break
• A Two-Dimensional MagnetoHydrodynamics Scheme for General Unstructured Grids
• Oscillations of Dirac and Majorana neutrinos in matter and a magnetic field
• Negative refraction by quantum vacuum