Abstract
Numerical simulations have shown that black holes (BHs) can strongly influence the evolution and present-day observational properties of globular clusters (GCs). Using a Monte Carlo code, we construct GC models that match the Milky Way cluster NGC 3201, the first cluster in which a stellar-mass BH was identified through radial velocity measurements. We predict that NGC 3201 contains 200 stellar-mass BHs. Furthermore, we explore the dynamical formation of main-sequence-BH binaries and demonstrate that systems similar to the observed BH binary in NGC 3201 are produced naturally. Additionally, our models predict the existence of bright blue straggler-BH binaries that are unique to core-collapsed clusters, which otherwise retain few BHs.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | L15 |
| Journal | Astrophysical Journal Letters |
| Volume | 855 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 10 2018 |
Funding
This work was supported by NASA ATP grant NNX14AP92G and NSF grant AST-1716762. K.K. acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant No. DGE-1324585. S.C. acknowledges support from CIERA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through Chandra award No. TM5-16004X/NAS8-03060 issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center (operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of the National Aeronautics Space Administration under contract NAS8-03060), and Hubble Space Telescope Archival research grant HST-AR-14555.001-A (from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555).
Keywords
- globular clusters: general
- globular clusters: individual (NGC 3201)
- methods: numerical
- stars: black holes
- stars: kinematics and dynamics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science