Black hole mergers from star clusters with top-heavy initial mass functions

Newlin C. Weatherford, Giacomo Fragione, Kyle Kremer, Sourav Chatterjee, Claire S. Ye, Carl L. Rodriguez, Frederic A. Rasio

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

39 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent observations of globular clusters (GCs) provide evidence that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) may not be universal, suggesting specifically that the IMF grows increasingly top-heavy with decreasing metallicity and increasing gas density. Noncanonical IMFs can greatly affect the evolution of GCs, mainly because the high end determines how many black holes (BHs) form. Here we compute a new set of GC models, varying the IMF within observational uncertainties. We find that GCs with top-heavy IMFs lose most of their mass within a few gigayears through stellar winds and tidal stripping. Heating of the cluster through BH mass segregation greatly enhances this process. We show that, as they approach complete dissolution, GCs with top-heavy IMFs can evolve into "dark clusters"consisting of mostly BHs by mass. In addition to producing more BHs, GCs with top-heavy IMFs also produce many more binary BH (BBH) mergers. Even though these clusters are short-lived, mergers of ejected BBHs continue at a rate comparable to, or greater than, what is found for long-lived GCs with canonical IMFs. Therefore, these clusters, though they are no longer visible today, could still contribute significantly to the local BBH merger rate detectable by LIGO/Virgo, especially for sources with higher component masses well into the BH mass gap. We also report that one of our GC models with a top-heavy IMF produces dozens of intermediatemass black holes (IMBHs) with masses M > 100⊙, including one with M > 500⊙. Ultimately, additional gravitational wave observations will provide strong constraints on the stellar IMF in old GCs and the formation of IMBHs at high redshift.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numberL25
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume907
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2021

Funding

This work was supported by NSF grant AST-1716762 and through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high-performance computing facility at Northwestern University. N.W. acknowledges support from the CIERA Riedel Family Graduate Fellowship as well as the NSF GK-12 Fellowship Program under Grant DGE-0948017. G.F. acknowledges support from a CIERA Fellowship. K.K. is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-2001751. S.C. acknowledges support from the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, under project No.12-R&D-TFR-5.02-0200.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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