Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 725, Issue 2, Pages 1918-1927Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/725/2/1918
Keywords
black hole physics; X-rays: binaries
Categories
Funding
- NSF [AST 07-08640, NSF 0746549]
- [TMO-11003X]
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien [746549] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We use dynamical mass measurements of 16 black holes in transient low-mass X-ray binaries to infer the stellar black hole mass distribution in the parent population. We find that the observations are best described by a narrow mass distribution at 7.8 +/- 1.2 M-circle dot. We identify a selection effect related to the choice of targets for optical follow-ups that results in a flux-limited sample. We demonstrate, however, that this selection effect does not introduce a bias in the observed distribution and cannot explain the absence of black holes in the 2-5 M-circle dot mass range. On the high-mass end, we argue that the rapid decline in the inferred distribution may be the result of the particular evolutionary channel followed by low-mass X-ray binaries. This is consistent with the presence of high-mass black holes in the persistent, high-mass X-ray binary sources. If the paucity of low-mass black holes is caused by a sudden decrease of the supernova explosion energy with increasing progenitor mass, this would have observable implications for ongoing transient surveys that target core-collapse supernovae. Our results also have significant implications for the calculation of event rates from the coalescence of black hole binaries for gravitational wave detectors.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available