Search results for "Stellar black hole"
showing 10 items of 24 documents
Accretion disks around binary black holes of unequal mass: General relativistic MHD simulations of postdecoupling and merger
2014
We report results from simulations in general relativity of magnetized disks accreting onto merging black hole binaries, starting from relaxed disk initial data. The simulations feature an effective, rapid radiative cooling scheme as a limiting case of future treatments with radiative transfer. Here we evolve the systems after binary-disk decoupling through inspiral and merger, and analyze the dependence on the binary mass ratio with $q\ensuremath{\equiv}{m}_{\text{bh}}/{M}_{\mathrm{BH}}=1,1/2$, and $1/4$. We find that the luminosity associated with local cooling is larger than the luminosity associated with matter kinetic outflows, while the electromagnetic (Poynting) luminosity associated…
Black hole lightning due to particle acceleration at subhorizon scales
2015
Supermassive black holes with masses of millions to billions of solar masses are commonly found in the centers of galaxies. Astronomers seek to image jet formation using radio interferometry, but still suffer from insufficient angular resolution. An alternative method to resolve small structures is to measure the time variability of their emission. Here, we report on gamma-ray observations of the radio galaxy IC 310 obtained with the MAGIC telescopes revealing variability with doubling time scales faster than 4.8 min. Causality constrains the size of the emission region to be smaller than 20\% of the gravitational radius of its central black hole. We suggest that the emission is associated …
Can gravity perturbations explain QPOs?
2007
We show the results of some numerical simulations trying to reproduce the QPO behavior in black hole and neutron star sources. Our simulations are based on the idea that a nearly periodic luminosity oscillation can be obtained from a perturbation of the source gravitational field with a sinusoidal time behavior. We find that some specific features of the QPO phenomenon can be described by this simple model, but the required amplitude of the gravity perturbation is more than 1% of the unperturbed gravitational field. If the hypothesis is formed that such a perturbation is due to a density fluctuation (of the accretion disk or the source itself, in the case of the neutron star) going around t…
GW170817: Implications for the Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background from Compact Binary Coalescences
2018
The LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations have announced the first detection of gravitational waves from the coalescence of two neutron stars. The merger rate of binary neutron stars estimated from this event suggests that distant, unresolvable binary neutron stars create a significant astrophysical stochastic gravitational-wave background. The binary neutron star background will add to the background from binary black holes, increasing the amplitude of the total astrophysical background relative to previous expectations. In the Advanced LIGO-Virgo frequency band most sensitive to stochastic backgrounds (near 25 Hz), we predict a total astrophysical background with amplitude $\Omega_{\rm…
On the dynamics of tilted black hole-torus systems
2016
We present results from three-dimensional, numerical relativity simulations of a {\it tilted} black hole-thick accretion disc system. The simulations are analysed using tracer particles in the disc which are advected with the flow. Such tracers, which we employ in these new simulations for the first time, provide a powerful means to analyse in detail the complex dynamics of tilted black hole-torus systems. We show how its use helps to gain insight in the overall dynamics of the system, discussing the origin of the observed black hole precession and the development of a global non-axisymmetric $m=1$ mode in the disc. Our three-dimensional simulations show the presence of quasi-periodic oscil…
Protomagnetar and black hole formation in high-mass stars
2017
Using axisymmetric simulations coupling special relativistic MHD, an approximate post-Newtonian gravitational potential and two-moment neutrino transport, we show different paths for the formation of either protomagnetars or stellar mass black holes. The fraction of prototypical stellar cores which should result in collapsars depends on a combination of several factors, among which the structure of the progenitor star and the profile of specific angular momentum are probably the foremost. Along with the implosion of the stellar core, we also obtain supernova-like explosions driven by neutrino heating and hydrodynamic instabilities or by magneto-rotational effects in cores of high-mass stars…
Influence of pions and hyperons on stellar black hole formation
2013
We present numerical simulations of stellar core-collapse with spherically symmetric, general relativistic hydrodynamics up to black hole formation. Using the CoCoNuT code, with a newly developed grey leakage scheme for the neutrino treatment, we investigate the effects of including pions and \Lambda-hyperons into the equation of state at high densities and temperatures on the black hole formation process. Results show non-negligible differences between the models with reference equation of state without any additional particles and models with the extended ones. For the latter, the maximum masses supported by the proto-neutron star are smaller and the collapse to a black hole occurs earlie…
Quasistationary solutions of scalar fields around collapsing self-interacting boson stars
2017
There is increasing numerical evidence that scalar fields can form long-lived quasibound states around black holes. Recent perturbative and numerical relativity calculations have provided further confirmation in a variety of physical systems, including both static and accreting black holes, and collapsing fermionic stars. In this work, we investigate this issue yet again in the context of gravitationally unstable boson stars leading to black-hole formation. We build a large sample of spherically symmetric initial models, both stable and unstable, incorporating a self-interaction potential with a quartic term. The three different outcomes of unstable models, namely, migration to the stable b…
Quasistationary solutions of scalar fields around accreting black holes
2016
Massive scalar fields can form long-lived configurations around black holes. These configurations, dubbed quasi-bound states, have been studied both in the linear and nonlinear regimes. In this paper we show that quasi-bound states can form in a dynamical scenario in which the mass of the black hole grows significantly due to the capture of infalling matter. We solve the Klein-Gordon equation numerically in spherical symmetry, mimicking the evolution of the spacetime through a sequence of analytic Schwarzschild black hole solutions of increasing mass. It is found that the frequency of oscillation of the quasi-bound states decreases as the mass of the black hole increases. In addition, accre…