Collapsar Gamma-ray Bursts Grind their Black Hole Spins to a Halt

TL;DR

This paper models the spin evolution of black holes in collapsars, showing that magnetic effects limit their spin to low values, which explains observed gamma-ray burst energetics and low spins from gravitational wave data.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-analytic model of magnetically arrested disk (MAD) driven black hole spin evolution in collapsars, linking low spins to GRB jet energetics and gravitational wave observations.

Findings

Black hole spins are limited to a rac{1}{5} 0.2 for typical accretion.

GRB jet luminosities are consistent with low black hole spins, rac{1}{5} to rac{1}{3} 0.3.

Delayed MAD onset can produce more luminous jets while maintaining low spins.

Abstract

The spin of a newly formed black hole (BH) at the center of a massive star evolves from its natal value due to two competing processes: accretion of gas angular momentum that increases the spin, and extraction of BH angular momentum by outflows that decreases the spin. Ultimately, the final, equilibrium spin is set by the balance between both processes. In order for the BH to launch relativistic jets and power a $ \gamma $-ray burst (GRB), the BH magnetic field needs to be dynamically important. Thus, we consider the case of a magnetically arrested disk (MAD) driving the spin evolution of the BH. By applying the semi-analytic MAD BH spin evolution model of Lowell et al. (2023) to collapsars, we show that if the BH accretes $ \sim 20\% $ of its initial mass, its dimensionless spin inevitably reaches small values, $ a \lesssim 0.2 $. For such spins, and for mass accretion rates inferred from collapsar simulations, we show that our semi-analytic model reproduces the energetics of typical GRB jets, $L_{\rm jet}\sim10^{50}\,\,{\rm erg\,s^{-1}}$. We show that our semi-analytic model reproduces the nearly constant power of typical GRB jets. If the MAD onset is delayed, this allows powerful jets at the high end of the GRB luminosity distribution, $L_{\rm jet}\sim10^{52}\,\,{\rm erg\,s^{-1}}$, but the final spin remains low, $ a \lesssim 0.3 $. These results are consistent with the low spins inferred from gravitational wave detections of binary BH mergers. In a companion paper, Gottlieb et al. (2023), we use GRB observations to constrain the natal BH spin to be $ a \simeq 0.2 $.