Dynamics of stellar black holes in young star clusters with different metallicities - II. Black hole-black hole binaries

Abstract

In this paper, we study the formation and dynamical evolution of black hole–black hole (BH–BH) binaries in young star clusters (YSCs), by means of N-body simulations. The simulations include metallicity-dependent recipes for stellar evolution and stellar winds, and have been run for three different metallicities (Z = 0.01, 0.1 and 1 Z⊙). Following recent theoretical models of wind mass-loss and core-collapse supernovae, we assume that the mass of the stellar remnants depends on the metallicity of the progenitor stars. We find that BH–BH binaries form efficiently because of dynamical exchanges: in our simulations, we find about 10 times more BH–BH binaries than double neutron star binaries. The simulated BH–BH binaries form earlier in metal-poor YSCs, which host more massive black holes (BHs) than in metal-rich YSCs. The simulated BH–BH binaries have very large chirp masses (up to 80 M⊙), because the BH mass is assumed to depend on metallicity, and because BHs can grow in mass due to the merger with stars. The simulated BH–BH binaries span a wide range of orbital periods (10−3–107 yr), and only a small fraction of them (0.3 per cent) is expected to merge within a Hubble time. We discuss the estimated merger rate from our simulations and the implications for Advanced VIRGO and LIGO.