Electromagnetic Precursors to Black Hole–Neutron Star Gravitational Wave Events: Flares and Reconnection-powered Fast Radio Transients from the Late Inspiral

The presence of magnetic fields in the late inspiral of black hole–neutron star binaries could lead to potentially detectable electromagnetic precursor transients. Using general-relativistic force-free electrodynamics simulations, we investigate premerger interactions of the common magnetosphere of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Astrophysical journal. Letters 2023-10, Vol.956 (2), p.L33
Main Authors: Most, Elias R., Philippov, Alexander A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrophysical black holes
Binary stars
Black holes
Electrodynamics
Emission
Field strength
General relativity
Gravitational wave sources
Gravitational waves
Luminosity
Magnetic fields
Magnetospheres
Magnetospheric radio emissions
Neutron stars
Plasma astrophysics
Precursors
Radio bursts
Radio transient sources
Stellar flares
Stellar systems
Upper bounds
X-ray emissions
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Summary:The presence of magnetic fields in the late inspiral of black hole–neutron star binaries could lead to potentially detectable electromagnetic precursor transients. Using general-relativistic force-free electrodynamics simulations, we investigate premerger interactions of the common magnetosphere of black hole–neutron star systems. We demonstrate that these systems can feature copious electromagnetic flaring activity, which we find depends on the magnetic field orientation but not on black hole spin. Due to interactions with the surrounding magnetosphere, these flares could lead to fast-radio-burst-like transients and X-ray emission, with  EM ≲ 10 41 B * / 10 12 G 2 erg s − 1 as an upper bound on the luminosity, where B * is the magnetic field strength on the surface of the neutron star.
ISSN:2041-8205
2041-8213
DOI:10.3847/2041-8213/acfdae