Comparison of gravitational waves from central engines of gamma-ray bursts: neutrino-dominated accretion flows, Blandford-Znajek mechanisms, and millisecond magnetars

TL;DR

This paper compares gravitational wave signals from different central engine models of gamma-ray bursts, including NDAFs, BZ mechanisms, and magnetars, highlighting their detectability and distinguishing features.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of GW signals from three GRB central engine models, including calculations of detection distances and characteristic frequencies.

Findings

GW signals from NDAFs could be detected up to 1 Mpc with advanced detectors.

Magnetars produce higher frequency GWs (~2000 Hz) compared to NDAFs and BZ mechanisms.

Detection distances vary significantly among models, aiding in identifying the central engine type.

Abstract

Neutrino-dominated accretion flow (NDAF) around a rotating stellar-mass black hole (BH) is one of the plausible candidates for the central engines of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Because the time-variant and anisotropic emission of neutrinos from NDAFs leads to GRB variability, NDAFs can be regarded as the sources of the strong gravitational waves (GWs). We calculate the dependences of the GW strains on both the BH spin and the accretion rate. We demonstrate that for typical GRBs with either single pulse or multiple pulses, the GWs from NDAFs might be detected at a distance of $\sim 100$ kpc/$\sim 1$ Mpc by advanced LIGO/Einstein Telescope with a typical frequency of $\sim 10-100$ Hz. Besides NDAFs, the other two competitive candidates for GRB central engine are Blandford-Znajek (BZ) mechanism and millisecond magnetars. We explore the GW signals from these two as well, and compare the corresponding results with NDAFs'. We find that for a certain GRB, the possible detected distance from NDAFs is about two orders of magnitude higher than that from BZ mechanism, but at least two orders of magnitude lower than that from magnetars. The typical GW frequency for BZ mechanism is the same with that of NDAFs, $\sim 10-100$ Hz, while the typical frequency for magnetars is $\sim 2000$ Hz. Therefore, the GWs released by the central engines of adjacent GRBs might be used to determine whether there is an NDAF, a BZ jet or a magnetar in GRB center.