1999/12/01 by Simon Portegies Zwart, Zwart, Simon Portegies, Stephen L. W. McMillan +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9912022
7 pages. Invited talk presented at the ESO workshop on ``Black Holes in Binaries and Galactic Nuclei'' in Honour of Prof. R. Giacconi, Garching 1999
arxiv created 1999/12/01 · openalex publication_date 1999/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2022/10/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Mergers of black-hole binaries are expected to release large amounts of\nenergy in the form of gravitational radiation. However, binary evolution models\npredict merger rates too low to be of observational interest. In this paper we\nexplore the possibility that black holes become members of close binaries via\ndynamical interactions with other stars in dense stellar systems. In star\nclusters, black holes become the most massive objects within a few tens of\nmillions of years; dynamical relaxation then causes them to sink to the cluster\ncore, where they form binaries. These black-hole binaries become more tightly\nbound by superelastic encounters with other cluster members, and are ultimately\nejected from the cluster. The majority of escaping black-hole binaries have\norbital periods short enough and eccentricities high enough that the emission\nof gravitational waves causes them to coalesce within a few billion years. We\npredict a black-hole merger rate of 10-8 to 10-7 per year per cubic\nmegaparsec, implying gravity-wave detection rates substantially greater than\nthe corresponding rates from neutron star mergers. For the first generation\nLaser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO-I), we expect about\none detection during the first two years of operation. For its successor\nLIGO-II, the rate rises to roughly one detection per day. There is about an\norder of magnitude uncertainty in these numbers.\n