Late-time post-merger modeling of a compact binary: effects of relativity, r-process heating, and treatment of transport effects

TL;DR

This study models late-time post-merger outflows from compact binary mergers, examining how relativity, r-process heating, and transport effects influence ejecta properties using axisymmetric simulations.

Contribution

It evaluates the impact of modeling choices like relativity, composition, and turbulent transport on ejecta predictions in post-merger simulations.

Findings

Newtonian treatment estimates ejecta mass well but underestimates velocity.

Heavy nuclei increase ejecta mass significantly.

Transport effects reduce ejecta mass and lower outflow velocities.

Abstract

Detectable electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves from compact binary mergers can be produced by outflows from the black hole-accretion disk remnant during the first ten seconds after the merger. Two-dimensional axisymmetric simulations with effective viscosity remain an efficient and informative way to model this late-time post-merger evolution. In addition to the inherent approximations of axisymmetry and modeling turbulent angular momentum transport by a viscosity, previous simulations often make other simplifications related to the treatment of the equation of state and turbulent transport effects. In this paper, we test the effect of these modeling choices. By evolving with the same viscosity the exact post-merger initial configuration previously evolved in Newtonian viscous hydrodynamics, we find that the Newtonian treatment provides a good estimate of the disk ejecta mass but underestimates the outflow velocity. We find that the inclusion of heavy nuclei causes a notable increase in ejecta mass. An approximate inclusion of r-process effects has a comparatively smaller effect, except for its designed effect on the composition. Diffusion of composition and entropy, modeling turbulent transport effects, has the overall effect of reducing ejecta mass and giving it a speed with lower average and more tightly-peaked distribution. Also, we find significant acceleration of outflow even at distances beyond 10,000\,km, so that thermal wind velocities only asymptote beyond this radius and at somewhat higher values than previously reported.