The nuclear symmetry energy plays a key role in determining the equation of state of dense, neutron-rich matter, which governs the properties of both terrestrial nuclear matter as well as astrophysical neutron stars. A recent measurement of the neutron skin thickness from the PREX collaboration has lead to new constraints on the slope of the nuclear symmetry energy, L, which can be directly compared to inferences from gravitational-wave observations of the first binary neutron star merger inspiral, GW170817 In this paper, we explore a new regime for potentially constraining the slope, L, of the nuclear symmetry energy with future gravitational wave events: the post-merger phase a binary neutron star coalescence. In particular, we go beyond the inspiral phase, where imprints of the slope parameter L may be inferred from measurements of the tidal deformability, to consider imprints on the post-merger dynamics, gravitational wave emission, and dynamical mass ejection. To this end, we perform a set of targeted neutron star merger simulations in full general relativity using new finite-temperature equations of state, which systematically vary L. We find that the post-merger dynamics and gravitational wave emission are mostly insensitive to the slope of the nuclear symmetry energy. In contrast, we find that dynamical mass ejection contains a weak imprint of L, with large values of L leading to systematically enhanced ejecta.
The gravitational wave signal emitted during the coalescence of two neutron stars carries information about the stars' internal structure. During the long inspiral phase the main matter observable is the tidal interaction between the binary components, an effect that can be parametrically modeled with compact-binary solutions to General Relativity. After the binary merger the main observable is frequency modes of the remnant, most commonly giving rise to a short-duration signal accessible only through numerical simulations. The complicated morphology and the decreasing detector sensitivity in …
We review the current status of general relativistic studies for coalescences of black hole--neutron star binaries. First, high-precision computations of black hole--neutron star binaries in quasiequilibrium circular orbits are summarized, focusing on the quasiequilibrium sequences and the mass-shedding limit. Next, the current status of numerical-relativity simulations for the merger of black hole--neutron star binaries is described. We summarize our understanding for the merger process, tidal disruption and its criterion, properties of the merger remnant and ejected material, gravitational w…
As a powerful source of gravitational waves (GW), a supermassive black hole (SMBH) merger may be accompanied by a relativistic jet that leads to detectable electromagnetic (EM) emission. We model the propagation of post-merger jets inside a pre-merger circumnuclear environment formed by disk winds, and calculate multi-wavelength EM spectra from the forward shock region. We show that the non-thermal EM signals from SMBH mergers are detectable up to the detection horizon of future GW facilities such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Calculations based on our model predict slowly …
We present a robust method to characterize the gravitational wave emission from the remnant of a neutron star coalescence. Our approach makes only minimal assumptions about the morphology of the signal and provides a full posterior probability distribution of the underlying waveform. We apply our method on simulated data from a network of advanced ground-based detectors and demonstrate the gravitational wave signal reconstruction. We study the reconstruction quality for different binary configurations and equations of state for the colliding neutron stars. We show how our method can be used to…
If at least one of the members of a compact binary coalescence is charged, the inspiral of the two members would generate a Poynting flux with an increasing power, giving rise to a brief electromagnetic counterpart temporally associated with the chirp signal of the merger (with possibly a small temporal offset), which we term as the {\em charged Compact Binary Coalescence} (cCBC) signal. We develop a general theory of cCBC for any mass and amount of charge for each member. Neutron stars (NSs), as spinning magnets, are guaranteed to be charged, so the cCBC signal should accompany all neutron st…
The observation of the inspiral and merger of compact binaries by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration ushered in a new era in the study of strong-field gravity. We review current and future tests of strong gravity and of the Kerr paradigm with gravitational-wave interferometers, both within a theory-agnostic framework (the parametrized post-Einsteinian formalism) and in the context of specific modified theories of gravity (scalar-tensor, Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet, dynamical Chern-Simons, Lorentz-violating, and extra dimensional theories). In this contribution we focus on (i) the information carri…
We present a search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of sub-solar mass black hole binaries using data from the first half of Advanced LIGO and Virgo's third observing run. The observation of a sub-solar mass black hole merger may be an indication of primordial origin; primordial black holes may contribute to the dark matter distribution. We search for black hole mergers where the primary mass is $0.1-7 M_{\odot}$ and the secondary mass is $0.1-1 M_{\odot}$. A variety of models predict the production and coalescence of binaries containing primordial black holes; some involve dynamic…
The detection of gravitational waves from a neutron star merger, GW170817, marked the dawn of a new era in time-domain astronomy. Monitoring of the radio emission produced by the merger, including high-resolution radio imaging, enabled measurements of merger properties including the energetics and inclination angle. In this work we compare the capabilities of current and future gravitational wave facilities to the sensitivity of radio facilities to quantify the prospects for detecting the radio afterglows of gravitational wave events. We consider three observing strategies to identify future m…
The inference of binary neutron star properties from gravitational-wave observations requires the generation of millions of waveforms, each one spanning about three order of magnitudes in frequency range. Thus, waveform models must be efficiently generated and, at the same time, be faithful from the post-Newtonian quasi-adiabatic inspiral up to the merger regime. A simple solution to this problem is to combine effective-one-body waveforms with the stationary phase approximation to obtain frequency-domain multipolar approximants valid from any low frequency to merger. We demonstrate that effect…
Swift coalescence of supermassive black holes in cosmological mergers of massive galaxies
超大质量黑洞(SMBH)在具有相当大质量的星系中无处不在。据推测,一对最初位于两个合并星系核中的SMBH将形成一个双星,并最终通过引力波的爆发而合并。到目前为止,理论模型和模拟已经无法直接预测的SMBH合并的时间尺度从头计算星系形成理论,只集中在有限的阶段的SMBH的轨道衰减的理想条件下的星系主机。预测的SMBH合并时间尺度很长,是Gyrs级的,这可能对未来的引力波搜索造成问题。在这里,我们提出了第一个多尺度的$Λ$ CDM宇宙学模拟,遵循轨道衰变的一对SMBH在合并的两个典型的大质量星系在$z\sim3$,所有的方式,以最终的合并驱动的引力波发射。质量为$\sim10^{8}$ M $_{\odot}$的两个SMBH迅速地沉降在合并残余物的核中。由于合并的耗散性质和高红移星系的内在致密性,残余物是三轴的,并且非常致密。这样的性质自然允许SMBH二进制的非常有效的硬化。SMBH合并发生在银河系核心合并后的$\sim10$百万年内,比哈勃时间小两个数量级。
Although multidimensional simulations have investigated the processes of double WD mergers, post-merger evolution only focused on the carbon-oxygen (CO) WD or helium (He) WD merger remnants. In this work, we investigate for the first time the evolution of the remnants stemmed from the merger of oxygen-neon (ONe) WDs with CO WDs. Our simulation results indicate that the merger remnants can evolve to hydrogen- and helium-deficient giants with maximum radius of about 300Rsun. Our models show evidence that merger remnants more massive than 1.95Msun can ignite Ne before significant mass-loss ensues…
We model explosions driven by the coalescence of a black hole or neutron star with the core of its massive-star companion. Upon entering a common envelope phase, a compact object may spiral all the way to the core. The concurrent release of energy is likely to be deposited into the surrounding common envelope, powering a merger-driven explosion. We use hydrodynamic models of binary coalescence to model the common envelope density distribution at the time of coalescence. We find toroidal profiles of material, concentrated in the binary's equatorial plane and extending to many times the massive …
Recent observational and theoretical results suggest that Short-duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (SGRBs) are originated by the merger of compact binary systems of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. The observation of SGRBs with known redshifts allows astronomers to infer the merger rate of these systems in the local universe. We use data from the SWIFT satellite to estimate this rate to be in the range $\sim 500$-1500 Gpc$^{-3}$yr$^{-1}$. This result is consistent with earlier published results which were obtained through alternative approaches. We estimate the number of coincident…
The LIGO/Virgo detections of binary black hole mergers marked a watershed moment in astronomy, ushering in the era of precision tests of Kerr dynamics. We review theoretical and experimental challenges that must be overcome to carry out black hole spectroscopy with present and future gravitational wave detectors. Among other topics, we discuss quasinormal mode excitation in binary mergers, astrophysical event rates, tests of black hole dynamics in modified theories of gravity, parameterized "post-Kerr" ringdown tests, exotic compact objects, and proposed data analysis methods to improve spectr…
Gravitational waves emitted from the coalescence of neutron star binaries open a new window to probe matter and fundamental physics in unexplored, extreme regimes. To extract information about the supranuclear matter inside neutron stars and the properties of the compact binary systems, robust theoretical prescriptions are required. We give an overview about general features of the dynamics and the gravitational wave signal during the binary neutron star coalescence. We briefly describe existing analytical and numerical approaches to investigate the highly dynamical, strong-field region during…
The parameterized post-Einsteinian framework modifies inspiral waveform models to incorporate effects beyond General Relativity. We extend the existing model into the merger-ringdown regime. The modification introduced here adds a single degree of freedom that corresponds to a change in the binary coalescence time. Other merger properties remain as predicted by GR. We discuss parameter estimation with this model, and how it can be used to extract information from beyond-GR waveforms.
Binary neutron star mergers are rich laboratories for physics, accessible with ground-based interferometric gravitational-wave detectors such as the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. If a neutron star remnant survives the merger, it can emit gravitational waves that might be detectable with the current or next generation detectors. The physics of the long-lived post-merger phase is not well understood and makes modelling difficult. In particular the phase of the gravitational-wave signal is not well modelled. In this paper, we explore methods for using long duration post-merger gravitational-w…
The planned Laser Interferometric Space Antenna (LISA) will be able to detect gravitational waves (GWs) from intermediate mass binary black holes (IMBBHs) in the mass range $\sim 10^{2} \mbox{-} 10^{4}\,M_{\odot}$ up to a redshift $z\sim20$. Modulation effects due to orbital motion of LISA around the Sun facilitate precise premerger localization of the sources, which in turn would help in electromagnetic (EM) followups. In this work, we calculate the uncertainties in sky position, luminosity distance, and time of coalescence as a function of time to coalescence. For representative masses of th…
The expected event rate of lensed gravitational wave sources scales with the merger rate at redshift $z\geq 1$, where the optical depth for lensing is high. It is commonly assumed that the merger rate of the astrophysical compact objects is closely connected with the star formation rate, which peaks around redshift $z\sim 2$. However, a major source of uncertainty is the delay time between the formation and merger of compact objects. We explore the impact of delay time on the lensing event rate. We show that as the delay time increases, the peak of the merger rate of gravitational wave sources…
The next two decades are expected to open the door to the first coincident detections of electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational wave (GW) signatures associated with massive black hole (MBH) binaries heading for coalescence. These detections will launch a new era of multimessenger astrophysics by expanding this growing field to the low-frequency GW regime and will provide an unprecedented understanding of the evolution of MBHs and galaxies. They will also constitute fundamentally new probes of cosmology and would enable unique tests of gravity. The aim of this Living Review is to provide an int…
The first inspiral of two neutron stars observed in gravitational waves was remarkably close, allowing the kind of simultaneous gravitational wave and electromagnetic observation that had not been expected for several years. Their merger, followed by a gamma-ray burst and a kilonova, was observed across the spectral bands of electromagnetic telescopes. These GW and electromagnetic observations have led to dramatic advances in understanding short gamma-ray bursts; determining the origin of the heaviest elements; and determining the maximum mass of neutron stars. From the imprint of tides on the…
We introduce an algorithm for placing template waveforms for the search of compact binary mergers in gravitational wave interferometer data. We exploit the smooth dependence of the amplitude and unwrapped phase of the frequency-domain waveform on the parameters of the binary. We group waveforms with similar amplitude profiles and perform a singular value decomposition of the phase profiles to obtain an orthonormal basis for the phase functions. The leading basis functions span a lower-dimensional linear space in which the unwrapped phase of any physical waveform is well approximated. The optim…
Coalescences of neutron stars and white dwarfs are relatively frequent phenomena, outnumbering other types of compact object mergers (neutron stars and black holes without involving white dwarfs) altogether. Such event potentially can produce not only optical, but also an X-ray burst. Transient source CDF-S XT2 [1] can be an example of this type of events as suggested by [2]. In this note we estimate the rate of these transients in the field of view of X-ray instruments on-board Spectrum-RG satellite. We demonstrate that during four years of the survey program several thousand of events relate…
We present a critical reanalysis of the black-hole binary coalescences detected during LIGO's first observing run under different Bayesian prior assumptions. We summarize the main findings of Vitale et al. (2017) and show additional marginalized posterior distributions for some of the binaries' intrinsic parameters.
In the literature, compact binary coalescences (CBCs) have been proposed as one of the main scenarios to explain the origin of some non-repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs). The large discrepancy between the FRB and CBC event rate densities suggest their associations, if any, should only apply at most for a small fraction of FRBs. Through a Bayesian estimation method, we show how a statistical analysis of the coincident associations of FRBs with CBC gravitational wave (GW) events may test the hypothesis of these associations. We show that during the operation period of advanced LIGO, the detecti…
The multitude of binary black hole coalescence detections in gravitational waves has renewed our interest on environments that can be the cradle of these mergers. In this work we study merger rates of binary black holes in globular clusters that are among the most dense stellar environments and a natural place for the creation of black hole binaries. To model these systems with all their variations we rely on the observational properties of the known Milky Way globular clusters. We consider direct capture events between black holes, as well as soft interactions of black hole binaries with star…
Gravitational waves from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers can constrain nuclear matter models predicting the neutron star's equation of state (EOS). Matter effects on the inspiral-merger signal are encoded in the multipolar tidal polarizability parameters, whose leading order combination is sufficient to capture to high accuracy the key features of the merger waveform (e.g.~the merger frequency). Similar EOS-insensitive relations exist for the post-merger signal and can be used to model the emission from the remnant. Several works suggested that the appearance of new degrees of freedom or pha…
Surface abundance observations of halo stars hint at the occurrence of $r$-process nucleosynthesis at low metallicity ($\rm{[Fe/H]< -3}$), possibly within the first $10^8$ yr after the formation of the first stars. Possible loci of early-Universe $r$-process nucleosynthesis are the ejecta of either black hole--neutron star or neutron star--neutron star binary mergers. Here we study the effect of the inclination--eccentricity oscillations raised by a tertiary (e.g. a star) on the coalescence time scale of the inner compact object binaries. Our results are highly sensitive to the assumed initial…
The recent detection of gravitational waves associated with a binary neutron star merger revives interest in interacting pulsar magnetospheres. Current models predict that a significant amount of magnetic energy should be released prior to the merger, leading to electromagnetic precursor emission. In this paper, we revisit this problem in the light of the recent progress in kinetic modeling of pulsar magnetospheres. We limit our work to the case of aligned magnetic moments and rotation axes, and thus neglect the orbital motion. We perform global two-dimensional axisymmetric particle-in-cell si…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) merging in dwarf galaxies will be detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) in the mid-2030s. Previous cosmological hydrodynamic simulations have shown the prediction of massive black holes merging in dwarf galaxies, but these simulations are limited by their resolution and cannot follow black hole pairs all the way to coalescence. We calculate the delay time between black hole pairing and merger based on the properties of the black holes and their host galaxies, and use these properties to calculate gravitational wave strains for eleven diffe…
About 10% of stars more massive than ${\approx}\,1.5\,\mathrm{M}_\odot$ have strong, large-scale surface magnetic fields and are being discussed as progenitors of highly-magnetic white dwarfs and magnetars. The origin of these fields remains uncertain. Recent 3D magnetohydrodynamical simulations have shown that strong magnetic fields can be generated in the merger of two massive stars. Here, we follow the long-term evolution of such a 3D merger product in a 1D stellar evolution code. During a thermal relaxation phase after the coalescence, the merger product reaches critical surface rotation, …