Accretion Disk Outflows from Compact Object Mergers
Abstract
Nuclear reactions play a key role in the accretion disks and outflows associated with the merger of binary compact objects and the central engines of gamma-ray bursts and supernovae. The proposed research program will investigate the impact of nucleosynthesis on these events and their observable signatures by means of analytic calculations and numerical simulations. One focus of this research is rapid accretion following the tidal disruption of a white dwarf (WD) by a neutron star (NS) or black hole (BH) binary companion. Tidal disruption shreds the WD into a massive torus composed of C, O, and/or He, which undergoes nuclear reactions and burns to increasingly heavier elements as it flows to smaller radii towards the central compact object. The nuclear energy so released is comparable to that released gravitationally, suggesting that burning could drastically alter the structure and stability of the accretion flow. Axisymmetric hydrodynamic simulations of the evolution of the torus including nuclear burning will be performed to explore issues such as the mass budget of the flow (accretion vs. outflows) and its thermal stability (steady burning and accretion vs. runaway explosion). The mass, velocity, and composition of outflows from the disk will be used in separate radiative transfer calculations to predict the lightcurves and spectra of the 56Ni-decay powered optical transients from WD-NS/WD-BH mergers. The possible connection of such events to recently discovered classes of sub-luminous Type I supernovae will be assessed. The coalescence of NS-NS/NS-BH binaries also results in the formation of a massive torus surrounding a central compact object. Three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the long-term evolution of such accretion disks will be performed, which for the first time follow the effects of weak interactions and the nuclear energy released by Helium recombination. The nucleosynthetic yield of disk outflows will be calculated using a detailed nuclear reaction network along characteristic Lagrangian trajectories. Results of these calculations will be used to (1) reassess NS-NS/NS-BH mergers as an astrophysical source of heavy r-process nuclei; and (2) calculate the light curves of the optical transients (`kilonovae') powered by the radioactive decay. Separate work will assess the effects that neutrino irradiation from a long-lived neutron star remnant has on the electron fraction of the disk outflows. The strong contrast between the opacities of proton- and neutron-rich matter imply that the presence and lifetime of such a remnant could be imprinted on the kilonova emission. Our investigation sheds light on the central engines of GRBs and other high-energy transients and hence is relevant to NASA's Swift, MAXI, and Fermi missions. Our results will also impact the interpretation of future observations of supernovae and their galactic environments with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Our results will also impact follow-up observations of kilonovae, maximizing the impact of HST to constrain the key open questions such as the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts and the origin of r-process nuclei.
- Publication:
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NASA ATP Proposal
- Pub Date:
- 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014atp..prop...79M