Electromagnetic emission of white dwarf binary mergers

It has been recently proposed that the ejected matter from white dwarf (WD) binary mergers can produce transient, optical and infrared emission similar to the "kilonovae" of neutron star (NS) binary mergers. To confirm this we calculate the electromagnetic emission from WD-WD mergers and compare with kilonova observations. We simulate WD-WD mergers leading to a massive, fast rotating, highly magnetized WD with an adapted version of the smoothed-particle-hydrodynamics (SPH) code Phantom. We thus obtain initial conditions for the ejecta such as escape velocity, mass and initial position and distribution. The subsequent thermal and dynamical evolution of the ejecta is obtained by integrating the energy-conservation equation accounting for expansion cooling and a heating source given by the fallback accretion onto the newly-formed WD and its magneto-dipole radiation. We show that magnetospheric processes in the merger can lead to a prompt, short gamma-ray emission of up to $\approx 10^{46}$ erg in a timescale of $0.1$-$1$ s. The bulk of the ejecta initially expands non-relativistically with velocity $0.01 c$ and then it accelerates to $0.1 c$ due to the injection of fallback accretion energy. The ejecta become transparent at optical wavelengths around $\sim 7$ days post-merger with a luminosity $10^{41}$-$10^{42}$ erg s$^{-1}$. The X-ray emission from the fallback accretion becomes visible around $\sim 150$-$200$ day post-merger with a luminosity of $10^{39}$ erg s$^{-1}$. We also predict the post-merger time at which the central WD should appear as a pulsar depending on the value of the magnetic field and rotation period.Comment: 12 pages, Accepted for publication in JCA

Non-BPS D-brane Near NS5-branes

We use tachyon field theory effective action to study the dynamics of a non-BPS Dp-brane propagating in the vicinity of k NS5-branes. For the time dependent tachyon condensation we will concentrate on the case of the large tachyon and the case when a non-BPS D-brane is close to NS5-branes. For spatial dependent tachyon condensation we will argue that the problem reduces to the study of the motion of an array of D(p-1)-branes and D(p-1)-antibranes in the vicinity of k NS5-branes.Comment: 21 page

Comments on D-brane Dynamics Near NS5-Branes

We study the properties of a D-brane in the presence of $k$ NS5 branes. The Dirac-Born-Infeld action describing the dynamics of this D-brane is very similar to that of a non-BPS D-brane in ten dimensions. As the D-brane approaches the fivebranes, its equation of state approaches that of a pressureless fluid. In non-BPS D-brane case this is considered as an evidence for the decay of the D-brane into ``tachyon matter''. We show that in our case similar behavior is the consequence of the motion of the D-brane. In particular in the rest frame of the moving D-brane the equation of state is that of a usual D-brane, for which the pressure is equal to the energy density. We also compute the total cross-section for the decay of the D-brane into closed string modes and show that the emitted energy has a power like divergence for $D0$, $D1$ and $D2$ branes, while converges for higher dimensional D-branes. We also speculate on the possibility that the infalling D-brane describes a decaying defect in six dimensional Little String Theory.Comment: 18 pages, latex, references added, minor change

Exactly Soluble Dynamics of (p,q) String Near Macroscopic Fundamental Strings

We study dynamics of Type IIB bound-state of a Dirichlet string and n fundamental strings in the background of N fundamental strings. Because of supergravity potential, the bound-state string is pulled to the background fundamental strings, whose motion is described by open string rolling radion field. The string coupling can be made controllably weak and, in the limit $1 << g^2_{\rm st} n << g^2_{\rm st} N$, the bound-state energy involved is small compared to the string scale. We thus propose rolling dynamics of open string radion in this system as an exactly solvable analog for rolling dynamics of open string tachyon in decaying D-brane. The dynamics bears a novel feature that the worldsheet electric field increases monotonically to the critical value as the bound-state string falls into the background string. Close to the background string, D string constituent inside the bound-state string decouples from fundamental string constituents.Comment: 27p, 2 figure