Gravitational waves from the remnants of the first stars in nuclear star clusters

TL;DR

This study models the formation and merger of Population III binary remnants in nuclear star clusters, predicting gravitational wave event rates and black hole masses consistent with LIGO observations.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-analytical framework to track Pop III binary remnants and their evolution in NSCs, providing new insights into early universe black hole mergers.

Findings

Merger rate peaks at redshift 5-7 with 0.4-10 yr^{-1} Gpc^{-3}.

Most mergers occur in low-mass NSCs formed at high redshifts.

Model can produce GW events similar to GW190521 with black holes in the mass gap.

Abstract

We study Population III (Pop III) binary remnant mergers in nuclear star clusters (NSCs) with a semi-analytical approach for early structure formation. Within this framework, we keep track of the dynamics of Pop III binary (compact object) remnants during cosmic structure formation, and construct the population of Pop III binary remnants that fall into NSCs by dynamical friction of field stars. The subsequent evolution within NSCs is then derived from three-body encounters and gravitational-wave (GW) emission. We find that 7.5% of Pop III binary remnants will fall into the centres ($< 3\ \rm pc$) of galaxies. About $5-50\%$ of these binaries will merge at $z>0$ in NSCs, including those with very large initial separations (up to 1~pc). The merger rate density (MRD) peaks at $z\sim 5-7$ with $\sim 0.4-10\ \rm yr^{-1}\ \rm Gpc^{-3}$, leading to a promising detection rate $\sim 170-2700\ \rm yr^{-1}$ for 3rd-generation GW detectors that can reach $z\sim 10$. Low-mass ($\lesssim 10^{6}\ \rm M_{\odot}$) NSCs formed at high redshifts ($z\gtrsim 4.5$) host most ($\gtrsim 90\%$) of our mergers, which mainly consist of black holes (BHs) with masses $\sim 40-85\ \rm M_{\odot}$, similar to the most massive BHs found in LIGO events. Particularly, our model can produce events like GW190521 involving BHs in the standard mass gap for pulsational pair-instability supernovae with a MRD $\sim 0.01-0.09\ \rm yr^{-1}\ Gpc^{-3}$ at $z\sim 1$, consistent with that inferred by LIGO.