The effect of supernova natal kicks on compact object merger rate

Abstract

Mergers of compact objects may lead to different astrophysical phenomena: they may provide sources of observable gravitational radiation, and also may be connected with gamma-ray bursts. Estimate of the rate with which such mergers take place are based on assumptions about various parameters describing the binary evolution. The distribution of one of these parameters - the kick velocity a neutron star receives at birth will strongly influence the number and orbital parameters of compact objects binaries. We calculate these effect using population synthesis of binary stars and show that the expected compact object merger rate changes by a factor of 30 when the kick velocity varies within its current observational bounds.

11 pages, 8 figures, submitted to A&A

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Gravitational Wave Astronomy: in Anticipation of First Sources to be Detected
• Explaining LIGO's observations via isolated binary evolution with natal kicks
• Mining Gravitational-wave Catalogs To Understand Binary Stellar Evolution: A New Hierarchical Bayesian Framework
• Short gamma-ray bursts as a possible probe of binary neutron star mergers
• Inferences about the distribution, merger rate, and evolutionary processes of compact binaries from gravitational wave observations