A new gravitational wave event reveals a binary black hole merger with total mass 190-265 solar masses, indicating black holes can form via gravitational-wave driven mergers beyond standard stellar channels.
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Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
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abstract
The final evolution of stars in the mass range 70 - 140 solar masses is explored. Depending upon their mass loss history and rotation rates, these stars will end their lives as pulsational pair-instability supernovae producing a great variety of observational transients with total durations ranging from weeks to millennia and luminosities from 10$^{41}$ to over 10$^{44}$ erg s$^{-1}$. No non-rotating model radiates more than $5 \times 10^{50}$ erg of light or has a kinetic energy exceeding $5 \times 10^{51}$ erg, but greater energies are possible, in principle, in magnetar-powered explosions which are explored. Many events resemble Type Ibn, Icn, and IIn supernovae, and some potential observational counterparts are mentioned. Some PPISN can exist in a dormant state for extended periods, producing explosions millennia after their first violent pulse. These dormant supernovae contain bright Wolf-Rayet stars, possibly embedded in bright x-ray and radio sources. The relevance of PPISN to supernova impostors like Eta Carinae, to super-luminous supernovae, and to sources of gravitational radiation is discussed. No black holes between 52 and 133 solar masses are expected from stellar evolution in close binaries.
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Millicharged particles weaken pulsational pair-instability in massive stars, shifting the lower edge of the black hole mass gap upward and turning gravitational wave observations into a probe for particles with masses 35-200 keV and charges 10^{-10} to 10^{-9}.
Presents a grid of 113 fast-rotating, chemically-homogeneous massive star models at Z=0.001 reaching core collapse with high angular momentum for use as supernova and GRB progenitors.
Models BBH spin-orbit alignment as random walk on sphere, deriving exact distribution after n encounters and showing alignment survives several strong encounters before isotropy.
Mass ratio reversals produce qualitatively different contributions to BBH merger rates and masses in COMPAS versus SEVN simulations, with core-growth dominating and most systems arising from massive low-metallicity progenitors.
Simulations show a 40-50 solar-mass black-hole cutoff is not guaranteed to be confidently recovered from GWTC-4-like catalogs, spurious detections are unlikely, and O4 data would reduce cutoff-mass uncertainty by at least 20 percent while yielding only a lower bound on the carbon-alpha reaction rate
The chirp-mass distribution of GW-detected binary black holes shows a ladder of peaks doubling in mass, with a new intermediate peak at 19 solar masses confirming a prior prediction from the hierarchical merger model.
Lumina runs a 500 cMpc radiation-hydrodynamic simulation combining IllustrisTNG galaxy formation with six-bin M1 radiation transport to predict late stellar-driven HI reionization ending around z=4.75 and AGN-driven HeII reionization nearly complete by z=3.
Reanalysis finds GW190521 prefers hyperbolic waveforms over quasi-circular precessing ones with ln Bayes factor 3.71, while other high-mass events and GW231123 favor the latter; mock signals indicate distinguishability challenges for high-mass precessing cases.
GWTC-2.1 adds eight new high-significance compact binary coalescence events to the prior catalog, extending the observed black hole mass range and including candidates inside the pair-instability mass gap.
A review of existing waveform models for LISA sources and the challenges that must still be overcome.
citing papers explorer
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GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190-265 $M_{\odot}$
A new gravitational wave event reveals a binary black hole merger with total mass 190-265 solar masses, indicating black holes can form via gravitational-wave driven mergers beyond standard stellar channels.
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The Black Hole Mass Gap as a New Probe of Millicharged Particles
Millicharged particles weaken pulsational pair-instability in massive stars, shifting the lower edge of the black hole mass gap upward and turning gravitational wave observations into a probe for particles with masses 35-200 keV and charges 10^{-10} to 10^{-9}.
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A grid of fast-rotating, chemically-homogeneous, supernova and/or long-GRB progenitors
Presents a grid of 113 fast-rotating, chemically-homogeneous massive star models at Z=0.001 reaching core collapse with high angular momentum for use as supernova and GRB progenitors.
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Getting Tilted: Random Walk of Binary Black Hole Spin-Orbit Alignment in Dense Star Clusters
Models BBH spin-orbit alignment as random walk on sphere, deriving exact distribution after n encounters and showing alignment survives several strong encounters before isotropy.
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Massquerade: Impacts of Mass Ratio Reversals on Binary Black Hole Merger Rates and Mass Distributions
Mass ratio reversals produce qualitatively different contributions to BBH merger rates and masses in COMPAS versus SEVN simulations, with core-growth dominating and most systems arising from massive low-metallicity progenitors.
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Measurement prospects for the pair-instability mass cutoff with gravitational waves
Simulations show a 40-50 solar-mass black-hole cutoff is not guaranteed to be confidently recovered from GWTC-4-like catalogs, spurious detections are unlikely, and O4 data would reduce cutoff-mass uncertainty by at least 20 percent while yielding only a lower bound on the carbon-alpha reaction rate
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The Chirp-Mass Ladder: A New Rung Emerges
The chirp-mass distribution of GW-detected binary black holes shows a ladder of peaks doubling in mass, with a new intermediate peak at 19 solar masses confirming a prior prediction from the hierarchical merger model.
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Introducing the Lumina project: large-volume radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the epochs of hydrogen and helium reionization
Lumina runs a 500 cMpc radiation-hydrodynamic simulation combining IllustrisTNG galaxy formation with six-bin M1 radiation transport to predict late stellar-driven HI reionization ending around z=4.75 and AGN-driven HeII reionization nearly complete by z=3.
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Gravitational Wave Hyperbolic Catalog: Reanalyzing High-Mass Gravitational Wave Signals Using Hyperbolic Waveforms
Reanalysis finds GW190521 prefers hyperbolic waveforms over quasi-circular precessing ones with ln Bayes factor 3.71, while other high-mass events and GW231123 favor the latter; mock signals indicate distinguishability challenges for high-mass precessing cases.
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GWTC-2.1: Deep Extended Catalog of Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
GWTC-2.1 adds eight new high-significance compact binary coalescence events to the prior catalog, extending the observed black hole mass range and including candidates inside the pair-instability mass gap.
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Waveform Modelling for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
A review of existing waveform models for LISA sources and the challenges that must still be overcome.
- A new group of low-spin $50-70M_\odot$ Black Holes and the high pair-instability mass cutoff