A line-smeared treatment of opacities for the spectra and light curves from macronovae

TL;DR

This paper introduces a line-smeared opacity method for modeling macronova spectra, revealing larger opacities and lower luminosities than traditional approaches, impacting the detectability of heavy r-process transients.

Contribution

The study develops and applies a line-smeared opacity approach to neutron star merger ejecta, improving the accuracy of radiative transfer calculations for macronovae.

Findings

Line-smeared opacities are 10-100 times larger than expansion opacities.

Larger opacities lead to lower peak luminosities in simulated spectra.

Heaviest r-process transients are more challenging to observe than previously estimated.

Abstract

Gravitational wave observations need accompanying electromagnetic signals to accurately determine the sky positions of the sources. The ejecta of neutron star mergers are expected to produce such electromagnetic transients, called macronovae. Characteristics of the ejecta include large velocity gradients and the presence of heavy $r$-process elements, which pose significant challenges to the accurate calculation of radiative opacities and radiation transport. For example, these opacities include a dense forest of bound-bound features arising from near-neutral lanthanide and actinide elements. Here we investigate the use of fine-structure, line-smeared opacities that preserve the integral of the opacity over frequency, which is an alternative approach to the expansion-opacity formalism. The use of area-preserving line profiles produces frequency-dependent opacities that are one to two orders of magnitude greater than those obtained with the use of expansion opacities in the Sobolev approximation. Opacities are calculated for four $r$-process elements (cerium, neodymium, samarium and uranium) using fully and semi-relativistic methods, as well as different amounts of configuration interaction in the atomic structure, in order to test the sensitivity of the emission to the underlying atomic physics. We determine the effect of these new opacities on simulated spectra and broad-band light curves by applying a multi-dimensional ray-trace method to the ejecta predicted from 3-dimensional merger calculations. With our substantially larger opacities the simulations yield slightly lower luminosities that peak in the mid-IR. These results suggest that those radioactively powered transients that are related to the very heaviest $r$-process material are more difficult to observe than previously believed.