Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 503, Issue 3, Pages 3371-3385Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab591
Keywords
gravitational waves; methods: numerical; black hole mergers; stars: kinematics and dynamics; globular clusters: general; open clusters and associations: general
Categories
Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG
- German Research Foundation) through the individual research grant 'The dynamics of stellar-mass black holes in dense stellar systems and their role in gravitational-wave generation' [BA 4281/6-1]
- AIfA
- HISKP
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The study focuses on the contribution of young massive star clusters and open star clusters to the merger rate density of binary black holes. It finds that the dynamical interactions in these clusters can explain the merger rate density and its evolution. The predicted merger rate densities agree with observational data and improve our understanding of compact binary merger channels.
I study the contribution of young massive star clusters (YMCs) and open star clusters (OCs) to the present day, intrinsic merger rate density of dynamically assembled binary black holes (BBHs). The BBH merger event rate is estimated based on a set of state-of-the-art evolutionary models of star clusters, as presented in Banerjee (2021). The merger-event rates are obtained by constructing a cluster population of the Universe, out of the models, taking into account mass distribution of clusters and cosmic star formation and enrichment histories, as per observations. The model BBH merger rate density ranges from a pessimistic to a reference value of 0.5-37.9 yr(-1) Gpc(-3), for a LIGO-Virgo-like detector horizon. The reference rate well accommodates the BBH merger rate densities estimated from GWTC-1 and GWTC-2 merger-event catalogues. The computed models also yield differential BBH merger rate densities that agree reasonably with those from GWTC-1 and, as well, with the much more constrained ones from GWTC-2. These results suggest that dynamical interactions in YMCs and OCs can, in principle, alone explain the BBH merger rate density and its dependence on the merging-binary properties, as inferred from to-date gravitational-wave (GW) events. The cosmic merger rate density evolution also agrees with GWTC-2. The models predict a rate of approximate to 5 yr(-1) Gpc(-3) for eccentric LIGO-Virgo mergers from YMCs and OCs. The improving constraints on BBH merger rate density with mounting GW events will help constraining scenarios of star cluster formation across cosmic time and as well the relative contributions of the various compact binary merger channels.
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