Outflows from black hole hyperaccretion systems: short and long-short gamma-ray bursts and "quasi-supernovae"

TL;DR

This paper explores how black hole hyperaccretion systems with outflows can explain various gamma-ray bursts and related phenomena, suggesting a unified model for short and long GRBs and introducing the concept of 'quasi-supernovae'.

Contribution

It applies the BH hyperaccretion inflow-outflow model to GRBs, demonstrating its ability to account for both short and long GRBs and related kilonovae, proposing a unified framework.

Findings

Low outflow ratio (~50%) can power all SGRBs and most LGRBs.

Some LGRBs may originate from merger events within this model.

Kilonovae luminosities depend strongly on outflow strength, resembling supernovae.

Abstract

The detections of some long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) relevant to mergers of neutron star (NS)-NS or black hole (BH)-NS, as well as some short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) probably produced by collapsars, muddle the boundary of two categories of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In both cases, a plausible candidate of central engine is a BH surrounded by a hyperaccretion disc with strong outflows, launching relativistic jets driven by Blandford-Znajek mechanism. In the framework of compact binary mergers, we test the applicability of the BH hyperaccretion inflow-outflow model on powering observed GRBs. We find that, for a low outflow ratio, $\sim 50\%$, postmerger hyperaccretion processes could power not only all SGRBs but also most of LGRBs. Some LGRBs might do originate from merger events in the BH hyperaccretion scenario, at least on the energy requirement. Moreover, kilonovae might be produced by neutron-rich outflows, and their luminosities and timescales significantly depend on the outflow strengths. GRBs and their associated kilonovae are competitive with each other on the disc mass and total energy budgets. The stronger the outflow, the more similar the characteristics of kilonovae to supernovae (SNe). This kind of `nova' might be called `quasi-SN'.