8,552 research outputs found
What Powered the Optical Transient AT2017gfo Associated with GW170817?
The groundbreaking discovery of the optical transient AT2017gfo associated with GW170817 opens a unique opportunity to study the physics of double neutron star (NS) mergers. We argue that the standard interpretation of AT2017gfo as being powered by radioactive decay of r-process elements faces the challenge of simultaneously accounting for the peak luminosity and peak time of the event, as it is not easy to achieve the required high mass, and especially the low opacity of the ejecta required to fit the data. A plausible solution would be to invoke an additional energy source, which is probably provided by the merger product. We consider energy injection from two types of the merger products: (1) a post-merger black hole powered by fallback accretion; and (2) a long-lived NS remnant. The former case can only account for the early emission of AT2017gfo, with the late emission still powered by radioactive decay. In the latter case, both early- and late-emission components can be well interpreted as due to energy injection from a spinning-down NS, with the required mass and opacity of the ejecta components well consistent with known numerical simulation results. We suggest that there is a strong indication that the merger product of GW170817 is a long-lived (supramassive or even permanently stable), low magnetic field NS. The result provides a stringent constraint on the equations of state of NSs
Particle collisions in the lower dimensional rotating black hole space-time with the cosmological constant
In this paper, we study the effect of ultra-high energy collisions of two
particles with different energies near the horizon of a 2+1 dimensional BTZ
black hole (BSW effect). We find that the particle with the critical angular
momentum could exist inside the outer horizon of BTZ black hole regardless of
the particle energy. Therefore, for the non-extremal BTZ black hole, the BSW
process is possible on the inner horizon with the fine tuning of parameters
which are characterized by the motion of particle. While for the extremal BTZ
black hole, the particle with the critical angular momentum could only exist on
the degenerate horizon, and the BSW process could also happen there.Comment: 12 pages,3 figure
The entropy puzzle and the quark combination model
We use two available methods, the Duhem-Gibbs relation and the entropy
formula in terms of particle phase space distributions, to calculate the
entropy in a quark combination model. The entropy of the system extracted from
the Duhem-Gibbs relation is found to increase in hadronization if the average
temperature of the hadronic phase is lower than that of the quark phase. The
increase of the entropy can also be confirmed from the entropy formula if the
volume of the hadronic phase is larger than 2.5-3.0 times that of the quark
phase. So whether the entropy increases or decreases during combination depends
on the temperature before and after combination and on how much expansion the
system undergoes during combination. The current study provides an example to
shed light on the entropy issue in the quark combination model.Comment: RevTex 4, 4 pages, 2 tables, 4 figures, discussions and references
added, to appear in PR
Studying newborn neutron stars by the transient emission after stellar collapses and compact binary mergers
The formation of neutron stars (NSs), both from collapses of massive stars
and mergers of compact objects, can be usually indicated by bright transients
emitted from explosively-ejected material. In particular, if the newborn NSs
can rotate at a millisecond period and have a sufficiently high magnetic field,
then the spin-down of the NSs would provide a remarkable amount of energy to
the emitting material. As a result, super-luminous supernovae could be produced
in the massive stellar collapse cases, while some unusual fast evolving and
luminous optical transients could arise from the cases of NS mergers and
accretion-induced collapses of white dwarfs. In all cases, if the dipolar
magnetic fields of the newborn NSs can be amplified to be as high as
G, a relativistic jet could be launched and then a gamma-ray burst can be
produced as the jet successfully breaks out from the surrounding
nearly-isotropic ejected material.Comment: 10 pages, 9 pictures, to appear in the AIP Proceedings of the
Xiamen-CUSTIPEN Workshop on the EOS of Dense Neutron-Rich Matter in the Era
of Gravitational Wave Astronomy, Jan. 3-7, Xiamen, Chin
Detection of gamma-ray emission from the Coma cluster with Fermi Large Area Telescope and tentative evidence for an extended spatial structure
Many galaxy clusters have giant halos of non-thermal radio emission,
indicating the presence of relativistic electrons in the clusters. Relativistic
protons may also be accelerated by merger and/or accretion shocks in galaxy
clusters. These cosmic-ray (CR) electrons and/or protons are expected to
produce gamma-rays through inverse-Compton scatterings or inelastic
collisions respectively. Despite of intense efforts in searching for
high-energy gamma-ray emission from galaxy clusters, conclusive evidence is
still missing so far. Here we report the discovery of MeV gamma-ray
emission from the Coma cluster direction with an unbinned likelihood analysis
of the 9 years of {\it Fermi}-LAT Pass 8 data. The gamma-ray emission shows a
spatial morphology roughly coincident with the giant radio halo, with an
apparent excess at the southwest of the cluster. Using the test statistic
analysis, we further find tentative evidence that the gamma-ray emission at the
Coma center is spatially extended. The extended component has an integral
energy flux of in the
energy range of 0.2 - 300 GeV and the spectrum is soft with a photon index of
. Interpreting the gamma-ray emission as arising from CR proton
interaction, we find that the volume-averaged value of the CR to thermal
pressure ratio in the Coma cluster is about . Our results show that
galaxy clusters are likely a new type of GeV gamma-ray sources, and they are
probably also giant reservoirs of CR protons.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Accepted by Physical Review D, more spatial
models for the gamma-ray emission are used, systematic checks on the results
are adde
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