English

Luminosity Functions and Detectability of Binary Neutron Star Merger-nova Signals with Various Merger Remnants

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-12-04 v2

Abstract

With the rapid advancements in next-generation ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors, it is anticipated that 10310^3-10510^5 binary neutron star (BNS) mergers per year will be detected, with a significant fraction accompanied by observable merger-nova signals through future sky surveys. Merger-novae are typically powered by the radioactive decay of heavy elements synthesized via the r-process. If the post-merger remnant is a long-lived rapid-rotating neutron star, the merger-nova can be significantly enhanced due to strong magnetized winds. In this paper, we generate mock BNS merger samples using binary population synthesis model and classify their post-merger remnants--black hole (BH) and magnetar, (i.e., long-lived supramassive NS and stable NS), based on results from numerical simulations. We then construct merger-nova radiation models to estimate their luminosity function. We find that the luminosity function may exhibit a distinctive triple-peak structure, with the relative positions and heights of these peaks depending on the equation of state (EOS) of the BNS. Furthermore, we estimate the average Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) detection efficiency feff\langle f_{\rm eff} \rangle with the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) and find that due to possible enhanced luminosity, the largest source redshift with feff>0.1\langle f_{\rm eff} \rangle>0.1 can be enlarged from zs0.5z_{\rm s}\sim 0.5 to zs11.5z_{\rm s}\sim 1-1.5. Besides, we also generate the detectable mass spectrum for merger-novae by feff\langle f_{\rm eff}\rangle, which may provide insights to the ToO searching strategy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.23115,
  title  = {Luminosity Functions and Detectability of Binary Neutron Star Merger-nova Signals with Various Merger Remnants},
  author = {Zhiwei Chen and Youjun Lu and Hao Ma and Qingbo Chu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.23115},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 13 figures, accepted by MNRAS