2010/07/31 by F. Pannarale, Francesco Pannarale, Aaryn Tonita +1 · 83 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black hole (networking) #Classical mechanics #Compact star #Dimensionless quantity #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #General relativity #Geometry #Mass ratio #Neutron star #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Star formation #Stars #Stellar mass #Torus #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/727/2/95
published in The Astrophysical Journal 727(2), 95 (IOP Publishing) · Added new figure and new table to confirm agreement with simulations; matches version accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2010/11/05 · openalex publication_date 2011/01/11 · arxiv updated 2015/05/19 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The merger of a binary system composed of a black hole (BH) and a neutron star (NS) may leave behind a torus of hot, dense matter orbiting around the BH. While numerical-relativity simulations are necessary to simulate this process accurately, they are also computationally expensive and unable at present to cover the large space of possible parameters, which include the relative mass ratio, the stellar compactness, and the BH spin. To mitigate this and provide a first reasonable coverage of the space of parameters, we have developed a method for estimating the mass of the remnant torus from BH–NS mergers. The toy model makes use of an improved relativistic affine model to describe the tidal deformations of an extended tri-axial ellipsoid orbiting around a Kerr BH and measures the mass of the remnant torus by considering which of the fluid particles composing the star are on bound orbits at the time of the tidal disruption. We tune the toy model by using the results of fully general-relativistic simulations obtaining relative precisions of a few percent and use it to investigate the space of parameters extensively. In this way, we find that the torus mass is largest for systems with highly spinning BHs, small stellar compactnesses, and large mass ratios. As an example, tori as massive as M b ,tor ≃ 1.33 M ☉ can be produced for a very extended star with compactness C ≃ 0.1 inspiralling around a BH with dimensionless spin parameter a = 0.85 and mass ratio q ≃ 0.3. However, for a more astrophysically reasonable mass ratio q ≃ 0.14 and a canonical value of the stellar compactness C ≃ 0.145, the toy model sets a considerably smaller upper limit of M b ,tor ≲ 0.34 M ☉ .