The mass of stellar black holes (BHs) is currently thought to be in the 3-20 Msun range, but is highly uncertain: recent observations indicate the existence of at least one BH with mass >20 Msun. The metallicity of the progenitor star strongly influences the mass of the remnant, as only metal-poor stars can have a final mass higher than ~40 Msun, and are expected to directly collapse into BHs with mass >25 Msun. By means of N-body simulations, we investigate the formation and evolution of massive stellar BHs (MSBHs, with mass >25 Msun) in young dense star clusters. We study the effects of MSBHs on the population of X-ray sources.
@article{arxiv.1302.2326,
title = {X-ray binaries powered by massive stellar black holes},
author = {M. Mapelli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.2326},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, to appear in X-ray Astronomy: towards the next 50 years!, Proceedings of the conference held October 1-5, 2012 in Milano, Italy. To be published on Mem. SAIt