Neutron-Rich Freeze-Out in Viscously Spreading Accretion Disks Formed from Compact Object Mergers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermal evolution and neutron-rich composition of accretion disks formed from neutron star mergers, revealing that these disks freeze out neutron-rich and synthesize rare isotopes, with implications for merger rates and gamma-ray burst beaming.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed simulations showing neutron-rich freeze-out in viscously spreading accretion disks from compact mergers, linking nucleosynthesis to merger rates and GRB jet properties.

Findings

Disks become neutron-rich (Ye ~ 0.2-0.4) during late-time advective phase.

Constraints on merger rate in the Milky Way based on isotope abundances.

Short GRB jets likely have wide opening angles, less collimated than long GRBs.

Abstract

Accretion disks with masses ~0.001-0.1 Msun form during the merger of neutron star (NS)-NS and black hole-NS binaries. Initially, such hyper-accreting disks cool efficiently by neutrino emission and their composition is driven neutron-rich by pair captures under degenerate conditions. However, as the disk viscously spreads and its temperature drops, cooling becomes inefficient and the disk becomes advective. Analytic arguments and numerical simulations suggest that once this occurs, powerful winds likely drive away most of the disk's remaining mass. We calculate the thermal evolution and nuclear composition of viscously spreading accretion disks formed from compact object mergers using one-dimensional height-integrated simulations. We show that freeze-out from weak equilibrium necessarily accompanies the disk's late-time transition to an advective state. As a result, hyper-accreting disks generically freeze out neutron-rich (with electron fraction Ye ~ 0.2-0.4), and their late-time outflows robustly synthesize rare neutron-rich isotopes. Using the measured abundances of these isotopes in our solar system, we constrain the compact object merger rate in the Milky Way to be < 1e-5 (M_d,0/0.1 Msun)^(-1) per year, where M_d,0 is the average initial mass of the accretion disk. Thus, either the NS-NS merger rate is at the low end of current estimates or the average disk mass produced during a typical merger is << 0.1 Msun. We also show that if most short duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are produced by compact object mergers, their beaming fraction must exceed f_b ~ 0.13(M_d,0/0.1 Msun), corresponding to a jet half-opening angle > 30(M_d,0/0.1 Msun)^(1/2) degrees. This is consistent with other evidence that short duration GRB outflows are less collimated than those produced in long duration GRBs.