Dynamics, nucleosynthesis, and kilonova signature of black hole - neutron star merger ejecta

TL;DR

This study models black hole-neutron star merger ejecta to understand their nucleosynthesis and kilonova signatures, revealing how ejecta composition and dynamics influence observable electromagnetic signals.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive end-to-end simulation of merger ejecta, nucleosynthesis, and kilonova emission, incorporating neutrino physics and tail-to-disk mass ratio effects, which were not previously modeled together.

Findings

Larger tail mass leads to fallback and more ejecta with lower electron fraction.

Heavy r-process elements dominate nucleosynthesis in most cases.

Kilonova lasts about a week with luminosity ~10^41 erg/s, showing orientation-dependent brightness.

Abstract

We investigate the ejecta from black hole - neutron star mergers by modeling the formation and interaction of mass ejected in a tidal tail and a disk wind. The outflows are neutron-rich, giving rise to optical/infrared emission powered by the radioactive decay of $r$-process elements (a kilonova). Here we perform an end-to-end study of this phenomenon, where we start from the output of a fully-relativistic merger simulation, calculate the post-merger hydrodynamical evolution of the ejecta and disk winds including neutrino physics, determine the final nucleosynthetic yields using post-processing nuclear reaction network calculations, and compute the kilonova emission with a radiative transfer code. We study the effects of the tail-to-disk mass ratio by scaling the tail density. A larger initial tail mass results in fallback matter becoming mixed into the disk and ejected in the subsequent disk wind. Relative to the case of a disk without dynamical ejecta, the combined outflow has lower mean electron fraction, faster speed, larger total mass, and larger absolute mass free of high-opacity Lanthanides or Actinides. In most cases, the nucleosynthetic yield is dominated by the heavy $r$-process contribution from the unbound part of the tidal tail. A Solar-like abundance distribution can however be obtained when the total mass of the dynamical ejecta is comparable to the mass of the disk outflows. The kilonova has a characteristic duration of 1 week and a luminosity of ~$10^{41}$ erg/s, with orientation effects leading to variations of a factor ~2 in brightness. At early times (< 1 day) the emission includes an optical component from the (hot) Lanthanide-rich material, but the spectrum evolves quickly to the infrared thereafter.