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The Black Hole Mass Distribution in the Galaxy | | Feryal Ozel
; Dimitrios Psaltis
; Ramesh Narayan
; Jeffrey E. McClintock
; | | Date: |
14 Jun 2010 | | Abstract: | We use the dynamical mass measurements of 16 black holes in low-mass X-ray
binaries to infer the stellar black hole mass distribution. We find that the
observations are best described by a narrow mass distribution at 7.8 +/- 1.2
Msolar. We identify a selection effect related to the choice of targets for
optical follow-ups that results in a flux-limited sample. We demonstrate,
however, that this selection effect does not introduce a bias in the observed
distribution and cannot explain the absence of black holes in the 2-5 solar
mass range. On the high mass end, we argue that the rapid decline in the
inferred distribution may be the result of the particular evolutionary channel
followed by low-mass X-ray binaries. This is consistent with the presence of
high-mass black holes in the persistent, high-mass X-ray binary sources. If the
paucity of low-mass black holes is caused by a sudden decrease of the supernova
explosion energy with increasing progenitor mass, this would have observable
implications for ongoing transient surveys that target core-collapse
supernovae. Our results also have significant implications for the calculation
of event rates from the coalescence of black hole binaries for gravitational
wave detectors. | | Source: | arXiv, 1006.2834 | | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites | |
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