Equilibrium and stability of supermassive stars in binary systems

Details Equilibrium and stability of supermassive stars in binary systems Equilibrium and stability of supermassive stars in binary systems

2001-04-25

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104408v1

Phys.Rev. D64 (2001) 024004

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

20 pages, to be published in PRD

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevD.64.024004

We investigate the equilibrium and stability of supermassive stars of mass $M \agt 10^5M_{\odot}$ in binary systems. We find that corotating binaries are secularly unstable for close, circular orbits with $r \alt 4R(M/10^6M_{\odot})^{1/6}$ where $r$ is the orbital separation and $R$ the stellar radius. We also show that corotation cannot be achieved for distant orbits with $r \agt 12 R (M/10^6M_{\odot})^{-11/24}$, since the timescale for viscous angular momentum transfer associated with tidal torques is longer than the evolution timescale due to emission of thermal radiation. These facts suggest that the allowed mass range and orbital separation for corotating supermassive binary stars is severely restricted. In particular, for supermassive binary stars of large mass $M \agt 6\times 10^6M_{\odot}$, corotation cannot be achieved, as viscosity is not adequate to mediate the transfer between orbital and spin angular momentum. One possible outcome for binary supermassive stars is the onset of quasi-radial, relativistic instability which drives each star to collapse prior to merger: We discuss alternative outcomes of collapse and possible spin states of the resulting black holes. We estimate the frequency and amplitude of gravitational waves emitted during several inspiral and collapse scenarios.

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