Influence of Irradiation-driven Winds on the Evolution of Intermediate-mass Black Hole X-ray Binaries

Abstract

Abstract In young dense clusters, an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) may get a companion star via exchange encounters or tidal capture and then evolve toward the IMBH X-ray binary by the Roche lobe overflow. It is generally thought that IMBH X-ray binaries are potential ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs); hence, their evolution is very significant. However, the irradiation-driven winds by the strong X-ray flux from the accretion disks around the IMBHs play an important role in determining the evolution of IMBH X-ray binaries and should be considered in the detailed binary evolution simulation. Employing the models with the MESA code, we focus on the influence of irradiation-driven winds on the evolution of IMBH X-ray binaries. Our simulations indicate that a high wind-driving efficiency (f = 0.01 for Z = 0.02, and f = 0.002 for Z = 0.001) substantially shortens the duration in the ULX stage of IMBH X-ray binaries with an intermediate-mass (5 M ⊙) donor star. However, this effect can be ignored for high-mass (10 M ⊙) donor stars. The irradiation effect (f = 0.01 or 0.002) markedly shrinks the initial parameter space of IMBH binaries evolving toward ULXs with high luminosity (L X > 1040 erg s−1) and hyperluminous X-ray sources in the donor-star mass versus orbital period diagram. Furthermore, the irradiation effect results in an efficient angular momentum loss, yielding to IMBH X-ray binaries with relatively close orbits. In our simulated parameter space, about 1% of IMBH binaries would evolve toward compact X-ray sources owing to short initial orbital periods, some of which might be detected as low-frequency gravitational-wave sources.