Alternative possibility of GW190521: Gravitational waves from high-mass black hole-disk systems

TL;DR

This study models high-mass black hole-disk systems to explore their gravitational wave emissions, suggesting they could explain GW190521 and serve as sources for future gravitational-wave detectors.

Contribution

It introduces numerical relativity simulations of high-mass black hole-disk systems, revealing their gravitational wave signatures and potential link to GW190521.

Findings

High-mass disks are unstable to spiral deformation.

Waveforms resemble GW190521.

Potential sources for future gravitational-wave detectors.

Abstract

We evolve high-mass disks of mass $15$-$50M_\odot$ orbiting a $50M_\odot$ spinning black hole in the framework of numerical relativity. Such high-mass systems could be an outcome during the collapse of rapidly-rotating very-massive stars. The massive disks are dynamically unstable to the so-called one-armed spiral-shape deformation with the maximum fractional density-perturbation of $\delta \rho/\rho \gtrsim 0.1$, and hence, high-amplitude gravitational waves are emitted. The waveforms are characterized by an initial high-amplitude burst with the frequency of $\sim 40$-$50$ Hz and the maximum amplitude of $(1$-$10)\times 10^{-22}$ at the hypothetical distance of 100 Mpc and by a subsequent low-amplitude quasi-periodic oscillation. We illustrate that the waveforms in our models with a wide range of the disk mass resemble that of GW190521. We also point out that gravitational waves from rapidly-rotating very-massive stars can be the source for 3rd-generation gravitational-wave detectors for exploring the formation process of rapidly-spinning high-mass black holes of mass $\sim 50$-$100M_\odot$ in an early universe.