English

Compact Binary Formation in Open Star Clusters II: Difficulty of Gaia NS formation in low-mass star clusters

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2024-05-20 v3 Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Gaia mission offers opportunities to search for compact binaries not involved in binary interactions (hereafter inert compact binaries), and results in the discoveries of binaries containing one black hole (BH) or one neutron star (NS), called "Gaia BHs" and "Gaia NSs", respectively. We have assessed if Gaia BHs and NSs can be formed in open clusters through dynamical interactions. In order to obtain a large number of inert compact binaries similar to Gaia BHs and NSs, we have performed gravitational NN-body simulations for a large number of open clusters whose total mass is 1.2×108M1.2 \times 10^8 M_\odot. These clusters have various masses, metallicities, densities, and binary fractions. We have found that open clusters form Gaia BHs (10610^{-6}-105M110^{-5} M_\odot^{-1}) much more efficiently than Gaia NSs (107M1\lesssim 10^{-7} M_\odot^{-1}) for any cluster parameters. This is quite inconsistent with observational results, because the reported numbers of Gaia BHs and NSs are 33 and 2121, respectively. Additionally, we have switched off NS natal kicks for 10410^4 open clusters each weighing 103M10^3 M_\odot in order to retain a large number of NSs in open clusters. Then, open clusters form inert NS binaries originating from primordial binaries rather than formed through dynamical interactions. This means that Gaia NSs are formed dominantly on isolated fields, not in open clusters, if there is no NS natal kick. We have concluded that Gaia BHs can be dominantly formed in open clusters, however Gaia NSs cannot.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.01731,
  title  = {Compact Binary Formation in Open Star Clusters II: Difficulty of Gaia NS formation in low-mass star clusters},
  author = {Ataru Tanikawa and Long Wang and Michiko S. Fujii},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.01731},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in The Open Journal of Astrophysics