Evolution of Galaxy Star Formation and Metallicity: Impact on Double Compact Object Mergers

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we study the impact of different galaxy statistics and empirical metallicity scaling relations on the merging rates and properties of compact object binaries. Firstly, we analyze the similarities and differences of using the star formation rate functions versus stellar mass functions as galaxy statistics for the computation of cosmic star formation rate density. We then investigate the effects of adopting the Fundamental Metallicity Relation versus a classic Mass Metallicity Relation to assign metallicity to galaxies with given properties. We find that when the Fundamental Metallicity Relation is exploited, the bulk of the star formation occurs at relatively high metallicities, even at high redshift; the opposite holds when the Mass Metallicity Relation is employed, since in this case the metallicity at which most of the star formation takes place strongly decreases with redshift. We discuss the various reasons and possible biases giving rise to this discrepancy. Finally, we show the impact of these different astrophysical prescriptions on the merging rates and properties of compact object binaries; specifically, we present results for the redshift-dependent merging rates and for the chirp mass and time delay distributions of the merging binaries.