Oliver Just

Comprehensive nucleosynthesis analysis for ejecta of compact binary mergers

We present a comprehensive study of r-process element nucleosynthesis in the ejecta of compact binary mergers (CBMs) and their relic black-hole (BH)-torus systems. The evolution of the BH-accretion tori is simulated for seconds with a Newtonian hydrodynamics code including viscosity, pseudo-Newtonian gravity for rotating BHs, and an energy-dependent two-moment closure neutrino transport scheme. The investigated cases are guided by relativistic double neutron star (NS-NS) and NS-BH merger models. Our nucleosynthesis analysis includes the dynamical ejecta expelled during the CBM phase and the neutrino and viscously driven outflows of the relic BH-torus systems. While typically 20 25 % of the initial torus mass are lost by viscously driven outflows, neutrino-powered winds contribute at most another 1 %. Since BH-torus ejecta possess a wide distribution of electron fractions and entropies, they produce heavy elements from A 80 up to the actinides, with relative contributions of A > 130 nuclei being subdominant. The combined ejecta of CBM and BH-torus phases can reproduce the solar abundances amazingly well for A > 90. Varying contributions of the torus ejecta might account for observed variations of lighter elements with 40 < Z < 56 relative to heavier ones, and a considerable reduction of the prompt ejecta compared to the torus ejecta, e.g. in highly asymmetric NS-BH mergers, might explain the composition of heavy-element deficient stars.

Impact of weak interactions of free nucleons on the r-process in dynamical ejecta from neutron star mergers

We investigate β-interactions of free nucleons and their impact on the electron fraction (Ye) and r-process nucleosynthesis in ejecta characteristic of binary neutron star mergers (BNSMs). For that we employ trajectories from a relativistic BNSM model to represent the density– temperature evolutions in our parametric study. In the high-density environment, positron captures decrease the neutron richness at the high temperatures predicted by the hydrody- namic simulation. Circumventing the complexities of modelling three-dimensional neutrino transport, (anti)neutrino captures are parametrized in terms of prescribed neutrino luminosities and mean energies, guided by published results and assumed as constant in time. Depending sensitively on the adopted νe–ν e luminosity ratio, neutrino processes increase Ye to values between 0.25 and 0.40, still allowing for a successful r-process compatible with the observed solar abundance distribution and a significant fraction of the ejecta consisting of r-process nuclei. If the νe luminosities and mean energies are relatively large compared to the ν e prop- erties, the mean Ye might reach values >0.40 so that neutrino captures seriously compromise the success of the r-process. In this case, the r-abundances remain compatible with the solar distribution, but the total amount of ejected r-material is reduced to a few per cent, because the production of iron-peak elements is favoured. Proper neutrino physics, in particular also neutrino absorption, have to be included in BNSM simulations before final conclusions can be drawn concerning r-processing in this environment and concerning observational conse- quences like kilonovae, whose peak brightness and colour temperature are sensitive to the composition-dependent opacity of the ejecta.

NEUTRON-STAR MERGER EJECTA AS OBSTACLES TO NEUTRINO-POWERED JETS OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

We present the first special relativistic, axisymmetric hydrodynamic simulations of black hole-torus systems (approximating general relativistic gravity) as remnants of binary-neutron star (NS–NS) and neutron star–black hole (NS–BH) mergers, in which the viscously driven evolution of the accretion torus is followed with self-consistent energy-dependent neutrino transport and the interaction with the cloud of dynamical ejecta expelled during the NS–NS merging is taken into account. The modeled torus masses, BH masses and spins, and the ejecta masses, velocities, and spatial distributions are adopted from relativistic merger simulations. We find that energy deposition by neutrino annihilation can accelerate outflows with initially high Lorentz factors along polar low-density funnels, but only in mergers with extremely low baryon pollution in the polar regions. NS–BH mergers, where polar mass ejection during the merging phase is absent, provide sufficiently baryon-poor environments to enable neutrino-powered, ultrarelativistic jets with terminal Lorentz factors above 100 and considerable dynamical collimation, favoring short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs), although their typical energies and durations might be too small to explain the majority of events. In the case of NS–NS mergers, however, neutrino emission of the accreting and viscously spreading torus is too short and too weak to yield enough energy for the outflows to break out from the surrounding ejecta shell as highly relativistic jets. We conclude that neutrino annihilation alone cannot power sGRBs from NS–NS mergers.

A new multidimensional, energy-dependent two-moment transport code for neutrino-hydrodynamics

We present the new code ALCAR developed to model multidimensional, multi energy-group neutrino transport in the context of supernovae and neutron-star mergers. The algorithm solves the evolution equations of the 0th- and 1st-order angular moments of the specific intensity, supplemented by an algebraic relation for the 2nd-moment tensor to close the system. The scheme takes into account frame-dependent effects of order O(v/c) as well as the most important types of neutrino interactions. The transport scheme is significantly more efficient than a multidimensional solver of the Boltzmann equation, while it is more accurate and consistent than the flux-limited diffusion method. The finite-volume discretization of the essentially hyperbolic system of moment equations employs methods well-known from hydrodynamics. For the time integration of the potentially stiff moment equations we employ a scheme in which only the local source terms are treated implicitly, while the advection terms are kept explicit, thereby allowing for an efficient computational parallelization of the algorithm. We investigate various problem setups in one and two dimensions to verify the implementation and to test the quality of the algebraic closure scheme. In our most detailed test, we compare a fully dynamic, one-dimensional core-collapse simulation with two published calculations performed with well-known Boltzmann-type neutrino-hydrodynamics codes and we find very satisfactory agreement.

Neutron-star radius constraints from GW170817 and future detections

We introduce a new, powerful method to constrain properties of neutron stars (NSs). We show that the total mass of GW170817 provides a reliable constraint on the stellar radius if the merger did not result in a prompt collapse as suggested by the interpretation of associated electromagnetic emission. The radius R_1.6 of nonrotating NSs with a mass of 1.6 M_sun can be constrained to be larger than 10.68_{-0.04}^{+0.15} km, and the radius R_max of the nonrotating maximum mass configuration must be larger than 9.60_{-0.03}^{+0.14} km. We point out that detections of future events will further improve these constraints. Moreover, we show that a future event with a signature of a prompt collapse of the merger remnant will establish even stronger constraints on the NS radius from above and the maximum mass M_max of NSs from above. These constraints are particularly robust because they only require a measurement of the chirp mass and a distinction between prompt and delayed collapse of the merger remnant, which may be inferred from the electromagnetic signal or even from the presence/absence of a ringdown gravitational-wave (GW) signal. This prospect strengthens the case of our novel method of constraining NS properties, which is directly applicable to future GW events with accompanying electromagnetic counterpart observations. We emphasize that this procedure is a new way of constraining NS radii from GW detections independent of existing efforts to infer radius information from the late inspiral phase or postmerger oscillations, and it does not require particularly loud GW events.

Production of 56Ni in black hole-neutron star merger accretion disc outflows

The likely outcome of a compact object merger event is a central black hole surrounded by a rapidly accreting torus of debris. This disc of debris is a rich source of element synthesis, the outcome of which is needed to predict electromagnetic counterparts of individual events and to understand the contribution of mergers to galactic chemical evolution. Here we study disc outflow nucleosynthesis in the context of a two-dimensional, time-dependent black hole-neutron star merger accretion disc model. We use two time snapshots from this model to examine the impact of the evolution of the neutrino fluxes from the disc on the element synthesis. While the neutrino fluxes from the early-time disc snapshot appear to favor neutron-rich outflows, by the late-time snapshot the situation is reversed. As a result we find copious production of 56Ni in the outflows.

Magnetorotational instability in neutron star mergers: impact of neutrinos

The merger of two neutron stars may give birth to a long-lived hypermassive neutron star. If it harbours a strong magnetic field of magnetar strength, its spin-down could explain several features of short gamma-ray burst afterglows. The magnetorotational instability (MRI) has been proposed as a mechanism to amplify the magnetic field to the required strength. Previous studies have, however, neglected neutrinos that may have an important impact on the MRI by inducing a viscosity and drag. We investigate the impact of these neutrinos effects on the linear growth of the MRI by applying a local stability analysis to snapshots of a neutron star merger simulation. We find that neutrinos have a significant impact inside the hypermassive neutron star, but have at most a marginal effect in the torus surrounding it. Inside the hypermassive neutron star, the MRI grows in different regimes depending on the radius and on the initial magnetic-field strength. For magnetic fields weaker than 10^13–10^14 G, the growth rate of the MRI is significantly reduced due to the presence of neutrinos. We conclude that neutrinos should be taken into account when studying the growth of the MRI from realistic initial magnetic fields. Current numerical simulations, which neglect neutrino viscosity, are only consistent, i.e. in the adopted ideal regime, if they start from artificially strong initial magnetic fields above ∼10^14 G. One should be careful when extrapolating these results to lower initial magnetic fields, where the MRI growth is strongly affected by neutrino viscosity or drag.

Core-collapse supernova simulations in one and two dimensions: comparison of codes and approximations

We present spherically symmetric (1D) and axisymmetric (2D) supernova simulations for a convection-dominated 9 Msun and a 20 Msun progenitor that develops violent activity by the standing-accretion-shock instability (SASI). We compare in detail the Aenus-Alcar code, which uses fully multidimensional two-moment neutrino transport with an M1 closure, with a ray-by-ray-plus (RbR+) version of this code and with the Prometheus-Vertex code that employs RbR+ two-moment transport with a Boltzmann closure. Besides testing consequences of ignored non-radial neutrino-flux components in the RbR+ approximation, we also discuss the influence of various transport ingredients applied or not applied in recent literature, namely simplified neutrino-pair processes, neutrino-electron scattering, velocity-dependent and gravitational-redshift terms, and strangeness and many-body corrections for neutrino-nucleon scattering. Alcar and Vertex show excellent agreement in 1D and 2D despite a slightly but systematically smaller radius (~1km) and stronger convection of the proto-neutron star with Alcar. As found previously, the RbR+ approximation is conducive to explosions, but much less severely in the convection-dominated 9 Msun case than in the marginally exploding 20 Msun model, where the onset time of explosion also exhibits big stochastic variations, and the RbR+ approximation has no distinctly stronger supportive effect than simplified pair processes or strangeness and many-body corrections. Neglecting neutrino-electron scattering has clearly unfavorable effects for explosions, while ignoring velocity and gravitational-redshift effects can both promote or delay the explosion. The ratio of advection timescale to neutrino-heating timescale in 1D simulations is a sensitive indicator of the influence of physics ingredients on explosions also in multidimensional simulations.

Imprints of neutrino-pair flavor conversions on nucleosynthesis in ejecta from neutron-star merger remnants

The remnant of neutron star mergers is dense in neutrinos. By employing inputs from one hydrodynamical simulation of a binary neutron star merger remnant with a black hole of

Core collapse with magnetic fields and rotation

3\ M_\odot