Compact objects formation, retention, and growth through accretion onto gas-embedded white-dwarfs/neutron-stars in gas-enriched globular-clusters

TL;DR

This paper proposes that accretion-induced collapse of white dwarfs in gas-enriched globular clusters explains the high retention rate of neutron stars, addressing a longstanding retention problem.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scenario where gas accretion onto white dwarfs leads to neutron star formation, solving the neutron star retention issue in globular clusters.

Findings

Accretion-induced collapse (AIC) explains the high neutron star retention.

Gas-rich environments in GCs facilitate white dwarf collapse.

The process may also produce diverse explosive transients.

Abstract

Observations of pulsars in globular clusters (GCs) give evidence that more >10-20% of neutron stars (NSs) ever formed in GCs were retained there. However, the velocity distribution of field pulsars peaks at 5-10 times the escape velocities of GCs. Consequently, only a small fraction of GC-NSs should have been retained, even accounting for low-velocity NSs formed through electron-capture supernovae. Thus, too few low-velocity NSs should have been retained in GCs, giving rise to the NS retention problem in GCs. Here we suggest a novel solution, in which the progenitors of most GC-NSs were ONe white-dwarfs (WDs) that accreted ambient intra-cluster gas and formed low-velocity NSs through accretion induced collapse (AIC). The existence of an early gas-enriched environment in GCs is supported by observations of GC multiple stellar populations. It is thought that 10s-100s of Myrs after the formation of the first generation of stars, and after ONe-WDs were already formed, GCs were replenished with gas which formed a second generation of stars. Accretion of such replenished gas onto the ONe-WDs catalyzed the AIC processes. The number of AIC-formed NSs is then sufficient to explain the large number of NSs retained in GCs. Similar processes might also drive CO-WDs to produce type-Ia SNe or to merge and form NSs, and similarly drive NSs to AIC and mergers producing BHs. Moreover, the wide variety of gas-catalyzed binary mergers and explosive transients suggest to occur in the gas-rich environments of AGN disk could similarly, and even more efficiently, occur in second-generation gas in GCs.