Interacting Kilonovae: Long-lasting Electromagnetic Counterparts to Binary Mergers in the Accretion Disks of Active Galactic Nuclei

TL;DR

This paper explores the dynamics and electromagnetic signatures of kilonovae occurring in AGN disks, revealing their potential as bright, long-lasting counterparts to neutron star mergers, with distinctive light curves but similar to other luminous transients.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of interacting kilonovae (IKNe) in AGN disks, detailing their dynamics, brightness, and observational signatures, highlighting their detectability and similarity to other luminous transients.

Findings

IKNe reach peak luminosities of 10^{43}-10^{44} erg/s.

They exhibit long rise times across UV, optical, and IR bands.

IKNe are promising bright EM counterparts to neutron star mergers in AGN disks.

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics and electromagnetic (EM) signatures of neutron star-neutron star (NS-NS) or neutron star-black hole (NS-BH) merger ejecta that occurs in the accretion disk of an active galactic nucleus (AGN). We find that the interaction between ejecta and disk gas leads to important effects on the dynamics and radiation. We show five stages of the ejecta dynamics: gravitational slowing down, coasting, Sedov-Taylor deceleration in the disk, re-acceleration after the breakout from the disk surface, and momentum-conserved snowplow phase. Meanwhile, the radiation from the ejecta is so bright that its typical peak luminosity reaches a few times $10^{43}-10^{44}~\rm erg~s^{-1}$. Since most of the radiation energy has converted from the kinetic energy of merger ejecta, we call such an explosive phenomenon an interacting kilonova (IKN). It should be emphasized that IKNe are very promising, bright EM counterparts to NS-NS/BH-NS merger events in AGN disks. The bright peak luminosity and long rising time (i.e., ten to twenty days in UV bands, thirty to fifty days in optical bands, and one hundred days to hundreds of days in IR bands) allow most survey telescopes to have ample time to detect an IKN. However, the peak brightness, peak time, and evolution pattern of the light curve of an IKN are similar to a superluminous supernova in a galactic nucleus and a tidal disruption event making it difficult to distinguish between them. But it also suggests that IKNe might have been present in recorded AGN transients.