Physics
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010iaus..266..213b&link_type=abstract
Star clusters: basic galactic building blocks throughout time and space, Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, IA
Physics
Gravitational Waves, Black Hole Physics, Stellar Dynamics, Scattering, Methods: N-Body Simulations, Methods: Numerical, Galaxies: Star Clusters, Binaries: Close
Scientific paper
We study the dynamics of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in star clusters, with particular attention to the formation of BH-BH binaries, which are interesting as sources of gravitational waves (GWs). We examine the properties of these BH-BH binaries through direct N-body simulations of Plummer clusters of N ≤ 105 low-mass stars with an initial population of stellar-mass BHs, using the nbody6 code. We find that the stellar-mass BHs segregate rapidly into the cluster core and form a dense subcluster of BHs in which BH-BH binaries form through three-body encounters. While most BH binaries are ejected from the cluster by recoils due to superelastic encounters with the single BHs, we find that for clusters with N ≳ 5 × 104, typically a few of them harden sufficiently so that they can merge via GW emission within the cluster. Also, for each of such clusters there are a few escaping BH binaries that merge within a Hubble time, with most merger times being within a few Gyr. These results imply that the intermediate-age massive clusters constitute the most important class of star cluster candidates that can produce dynamical BH-BH mergers at the present epoch. The BH-BH merger rates obtained from our computations imply a significant detection rate (~30 yr-1) for the proposed Advanced LIGO GW detector.
Banerjee Sambaran
Baumgardt Holger
Kroupa Pavel
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