TY - JOUR

T1 - Merging binary black holes formed through double-core evolution

AU - Qin, Y.

AU - Hu, R. C.

AU - Meynet, G.

AU - Wang, Y. Z.

AU - Zhu, J. P.

AU - Song, H. F.

AU - Shu, X. W.

AU - Wu, S. C.

N1 - Funding Information: We would like to thank the anonymous referee for the helpful comments and suggestions. Y.Q. acknowledges the support from the Doctoral research start-up funding of Anhui Normal University and from Key Laboratory for Relativistic Astrophysics in Guangxi University. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12003002, 12192220, 12192221, 11863003, 12173010) and the Natural Science Foundation of Universities in Anhui Province (Grant No. KJ2021A0106). G.M. has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No 833925, project STAREX). All figures were made with the free Python module Matplotlib (Hunter 2007).

PY - 2023/3

Y1 - 2023/3

N2 - Context. To date, various formation channels of merging events have been heavily explored with the detection of nearly 100 double black hole (BH) merger events reported by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration. In this paper, we systematically investigate an alternative formation scenario: binary BHs (BBHs) formed through double helium stars (hereafter, a double-core evolution channela ). In this scenario, two helium stars (He-rich stars) could be the outcome of the classical isolated binary evolution scenario with and without the common envelope (CE) phase (i.e., CE channel and stable mass transfer channel) or, alternatively, of massive close binaries evolving chemically homogeneously (i.e., CHE channel). Aims. We study the properties (i.e., the chirp masses and the effective spins) of BBHs formed through the double-core evolution and investigate the impact of different efficiencies of angular momentum transport within massive He-rich stars on double-core evolution. Methods. We performed detailed stellar structure and binary evolution calculations that take into account internal rotation and mass loss of He-rich stars as well as tidal interactions in binaries. We systematically studied the parameter space of initial binary He-rich stars, including the initial mass and metallicity of He-rich stars as well as initial orbital periods. Apart from direct core collapse with mass and angular momentum conserved, we also follow the framework in Batta & Ramirez-Ruiz (2019, ArXiv e-prints [arXiv:1904.04835]) to estimate the mass and spin of the resulting BHs. Results. We show that the radii of massive He-rich stars decrease as a function of time, which comes mainly from mass loss and mixing in high metallicity and from mixing in low metallicity. For double He-rich stars with equal masses in binaries, we find that tides start to be at work on the zero age helium main sequence (i.e., the time when a He-rich star starts to burn helium in the core, which is analogous to zero age main sequence for core hydrogen burning) for initial orbital periods not longer than 1.0 day, depending on the initial metallicities. In addition to the stellar mass-loss rate and tidal interactions in binaries, we find that the role of the angular momentum transport efficiency in determining the resulting BH spins becomes stronger when considering BH progenitors originated from a higher metal-metallicity environment. We highlight that the double-core evolution scenario does not always produce fast-spinning BBHs and compare the properties of the BBHs reported from the LVK with our modeling. Conclusions. After detailed binary calculations of double-core evolution, we have confirmed that the spin of the BH is not only determined by the interplay of the binary's different initial conditions (metallicity, mass, and orbital period) but is also dependent on the angular momentum transport efficiency within its progenitor. We predict that with the sensitivity improvements to the LVK's next observing run (O4), the sample of merging BBHs will contain more sources with positive but moderate (even high) Ieff and part of the events will likely show to have been formed through the double-core evolution channel.

AB - Context. To date, various formation channels of merging events have been heavily explored with the detection of nearly 100 double black hole (BH) merger events reported by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration. In this paper, we systematically investigate an alternative formation scenario: binary BHs (BBHs) formed through double helium stars (hereafter, a double-core evolution channela ). In this scenario, two helium stars (He-rich stars) could be the outcome of the classical isolated binary evolution scenario with and without the common envelope (CE) phase (i.e., CE channel and stable mass transfer channel) or, alternatively, of massive close binaries evolving chemically homogeneously (i.e., CHE channel). Aims. We study the properties (i.e., the chirp masses and the effective spins) of BBHs formed through the double-core evolution and investigate the impact of different efficiencies of angular momentum transport within massive He-rich stars on double-core evolution. Methods. We performed detailed stellar structure and binary evolution calculations that take into account internal rotation and mass loss of He-rich stars as well as tidal interactions in binaries. We systematically studied the parameter space of initial binary He-rich stars, including the initial mass and metallicity of He-rich stars as well as initial orbital periods. Apart from direct core collapse with mass and angular momentum conserved, we also follow the framework in Batta & Ramirez-Ruiz (2019, ArXiv e-prints [arXiv:1904.04835]) to estimate the mass and spin of the resulting BHs. Results. We show that the radii of massive He-rich stars decrease as a function of time, which comes mainly from mass loss and mixing in high metallicity and from mixing in low metallicity. For double He-rich stars with equal masses in binaries, we find that tides start to be at work on the zero age helium main sequence (i.e., the time when a He-rich star starts to burn helium in the core, which is analogous to zero age main sequence for core hydrogen burning) for initial orbital periods not longer than 1.0 day, depending on the initial metallicities. In addition to the stellar mass-loss rate and tidal interactions in binaries, we find that the role of the angular momentum transport efficiency in determining the resulting BH spins becomes stronger when considering BH progenitors originated from a higher metal-metallicity environment. We highlight that the double-core evolution scenario does not always produce fast-spinning BBHs and compare the properties of the BBHs reported from the LVK with our modeling. Conclusions. After detailed binary calculations of double-core evolution, we have confirmed that the spin of the BH is not only determined by the interplay of the binary's different initial conditions (metallicity, mass, and orbital period) but is also dependent on the angular momentum transport efficiency within its progenitor. We predict that with the sensitivity improvements to the LVK's next observing run (O4), the sample of merging BBHs will contain more sources with positive but moderate (even high) Ieff and part of the events will likely show to have been formed through the double-core evolution channel.

KW - Binaries: close

KW - Binaries: general

KW - Gravitational waves

KW - Stars: black holes

KW - Stars: evolution

KW - Stars: Wolf-Rayet

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85149683275&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.2301.04918

DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2301.04918

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85149683275

VL - 671

JO - Astronomy and astrophysics

JF - Astronomy and astrophysics

SN - 0004-6361

IS - A&A

M1 - A62

ER -