Electromagnetic Precursors to Gravitational-wave Events: Numerical Simulations of Flaring in Pre-merger Binary Neutron Star Magnetospheres
- Creators
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Most, Elias R.
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Philippov, Alexander A.
Abstract
The detection of gravitational waves from neutron star merger events has opened up a new field of multimessenger astronomy linking gravitational-wave events to short gamma-ray bursts and kilonova afterglows. A further—yet to be discovered—electromagnetic counterpart is a precursor emission produced by the nontrivial interaction of the magnetospheres of the two neutron stars prior to merger. By performing special-relativistic force-free simulations of orbiting neutron stars we discuss the effect of different magnetic field orientations and show how the emission can be significantly enhanced by differential motion present in the binary, either due to stellar spins or misaligned stellar magnetospheres. We find that the buildup of twist in the magnetic flux tube connecting the two stars can lead to the repeated emission of powerful flares for a variety of orbital configurations. We also discuss potential coherent radio emission mechanisms in the flaring process.
Additional Information
© 2020. The American Astronomical Society. E.R.M. and A.P. would like to thank Federico Carrasco, William East, Hayk Hakobyan, Luis Lehner, Yuri Levin, Maxim Lyutikov, Brian Metzger, Kohta Murase, Eliot Quataert, Luciano Rezzolla, Masaru Shibata, Lorenzo Sironi, Anatoly Spitkovsky, and James Stone for valuable and insightful discussions. E.R.M. gratefully acknowledges support and hospitality from the Simons Foundation through the pre-doctoral program at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1909458. Research at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation.Attached Files
Published - Most_2020_ApJL_893_L6.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 121226
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230501-297378000.46
- Simons Foundation
- AST-1909458
- NSF
- Created
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2023-05-04Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-05-04Created from EPrint's last_modified field