Collapse of rotating stars in the Universe and the cosmic gamma ray bursts

TL;DR

This paper investigates the late evolutionary stages of massive close binary stars to understand the mechanisms behind gamma-ray bursts, focusing on the formation of accretion disks around compact objects like black holes and neutron stars.

Contribution

It proposes a model linking the collapse of massive stars and binary mergers to gamma-ray burst origins, using the 'Scenario Machine' for frequency estimations.

Findings

Estimated event frequencies leading to relativistic object formation in the Galaxy.

Identified key processes like Wolf-Rayet star collapse and binary mergers as GRB sources.

Suggested formation of accretion disks around black holes and neutron stars as essential for GRBs.

Abstract

We analyze here late evolutionary stages of massive (with initial mass higher than 8 masses of the Sun) close binary stars. Our purposes are to study possible mechanisms of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) origin. We suppose in this paper that GRB phenomenon require formation of massive (approx. 1 M_sun) compact (approx. 10 km) accretion disks around Kerr black holes and neutron stars. Such Kerr black holes are products of collapse of Wolf-Rayet stars in extremely close binaries and merging of neutron stars with black holes and neutron stars with neutron stars in close binary systems. Required accretion disks also can be formed around neutron stars which were formed during collapse of accreting oxygen-neon white dwarfs. We have estimated frequencies of events which lead to a rotational collapse concerned with formation of rapidly rotating relativistic objects in the Galaxy. We made our calculations using the "Scenario Machine".