Discovery of a Black-hole Mass - Period Correlation in Soft X-ray Transients and its Implication for Gamma-Ray Burst and Hypernova Mechanisms

Details Discovery of a Black-hole Mass - Period Correlation in Soft X-ray Transients and its Implication for Gamma-Ray Burst and Hypernova Mechanisms Discovery of a Black-hole Mass - Period Correlation in Soft X-ray Transients and its Implication for Gamma-Ray Burst and Hypernova Mechanisms

2001-09-28

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0109538v2

Astrophys.J. 575 (2002) 996-1006

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

33 pages, 12 figures,substantial changes

Scientific paper

10.1086/341349

We investigate the soft X-ray transients with black hole primaries which may have been the sources of gamma-ray bursts and hypernovae earlier in their evolution. We find that the black-hole mass increases with the orbital period of the binary, both for systems with main-sequence donors and for those with evolved donors. This correlation can be understood in terms of angular-momentum support in the helium star progenitor of the black hole, if the systems with shorter periods had more rapidly rotating primaries prior to their explosion: centrifugal support will then prevent more of its mass from collapsing into the black hole. This trend of more rapidly rotating stars in closer binaries is very generally seen, and in the present case can be understood in terms of spin-up during spiral in and subsequent tidal coupling. We investigate the relation quantitatively and obtain reasonable agreement with the observed mass-period correlation. A natural consequence of this observation is that black holes formed in soft X-ray transients acquire significant Kerr parameters. This makes them good sources of power for gamma-ray bursts and hypernovae, via the Blandford-Znajek mechanism, and thus supports our model for the origin of gamma-ray bursts in soft X-ray transients.

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