Electromagnetic precursor flares from the late inspiral of neutron star binaries
- Creators
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Most, Elias R.
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Philippov, Alexander A.
Abstract
The coalescence of two neutron stars is accompanied by the emission of gravitational waves, and can also feature electromagnetic counterparts powered by mass ejecta and the formation of a relativistic jet after the merger. Since neutron stars can feature strong magnetic fields, the non-trivial interaction of the neutron star magnetospheres might fuel potentially powerful electromagnetic transients prior to merger. A key process powering those precursor transients is relativistic reconnection in strong current sheets formed between the two stars. In this work, we provide a detailed analysis of how the twisting of the common magnetosphere of the binary leads to an emission of electromagnetic flares, akin to those produced in the solar corona. By means of relativistic force-free electrodynamics simulations, we clarify the role of different magnetic field topologies in the process. We conclude that flaring will always occur for suitable magnetic field alignments, unless one of the neutron stars has a magnetic field significantly weaker than the other.
Additional Information
© 2022 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) The authors are grateful for discussions with S. Cherkis, S. de Mink, G. Hallinan, D. Lai, M. Lyutikov, and K. Mooley. ERM gratefully acknowledges support from a joint fellowship at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, the Princeton Gravity Initiative and the Institute for Advanced Study. The simulations were performed on the NSF Frontera supercomputer under grants AST20008 andAST21006. AP acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1909458. We acknowledge the use of the following software packages: AMREX (Zhang et al. 2019), MATPLOTLIB (Hunter 2007), NUMPY (Harris et al. 2020), and SCIPY (Virtanen et al. 2020). DATA AVAILABILITY. Data is available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.Attached Files
Published - stac1909.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 121200
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230501-296889000.13
- Princeton University
- Institute for Advanced Study
- AST-20008
- NSF
- AST-21006
- NSF
- AST-1909458
- NSF
- Created
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2023-05-25Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-05-25Created from EPrint's last_modified field