HOMERICS · The History of Merging Compact-Object Binaries

The History of Merging Compact-Object Binaries

On February 11, 2016 the LIGO-Virgo scientific collaboration announced the detection of a gravitational-wave signal from two colliding black holes. The event was registered on September 14, 2015 and it was the first direct evidence that (i) black holes exist, (ii) black holes can merge and that (iii) stellar black holes can be as heavy as 40 times the mass of the Sun. Since then, the LIGO-Virgo instruments detected gravitational-wave signals coming from tens of colliding black holes, and this number is destined to significantly increase in the next years. Despite the increasing number of detections, from the theoretical point of view, the formation and evolutionary history of black holes are still unknown and we cannot provide an astrophysical interpretation to the systems detected by LIGO-Virgo. We know that stellar black holes form from the death of massive stars, but theoretical models that predict black hole masses are very uncertain. Furthermore, we do not know what are the mechanisms that bring two black holes so close to each other to make them collide. The aim of the HOMERICS project is to shed light on the formation and evolutionary pathways of merging compact objects and the final goal is to provide an astrophysical interpretation for present and forthcoming gravitational-wave detections. The first objective of the project is to study the evolution of isolated binary stars and investigate whether two stars that are bound to each other since the beginning of their life, can form LIGO-Virgo-like black-hole systems. The second objective is to investigate whether LIGO-Virgo-like black-hole systems can form in a dense stellar environment, that is in a more crowded place, which can contain hundreds of thousands of stars (e.g. star cluster). To achieve the objectives, a large number of computer simulations of isolated binaries and star clusters must be carried out. As such, the HOMERICS project requires the development of new codes (called SEVN and HiGPUs-RX). To extend our knowledge of merging black holes, the codes will be developed to run natively on state-of-the-art computing accelerators (Graphics Processing Units) and they will implement the most recent developments in stellar evolution and stellar dynamics theories. Furthermore, all the simulations and codes developed for the HOMERICS project will be publicly available after the end of the project. This will allow other users to (i) reproduce the results of the project, (ii) (re)use the data and/or codes to investigate other astrophysical phenomena, not necessarily related to the HOMERICS project.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз