The mass ejection from the merger of binary neutron stars

Kenta Hotokezaka, Kenta Kiuchi, Koutarou Kyutoku, Hirotada Okawa, Yu-ichiro Sekiguchi, Masaru Shibata, Keisuke Taniguchi

Published 2012-12-04, updated 2013-01-31Version 2

Numerical-relativity simulations for the merger of binary neutron stars are performed for a variety of equations of state (EOSs) and for a plausible range of the neutron-star mass, focusing primarily on the properties of the material ejected from the system. We find that a fraction of the material is ejected as a mildly relativistic and mildly anisotropic outflow with the typical and maximum velocities $\sim 0.15$ -- $0.25c$ and $\sim 0.5$ -- $0.8c$ (where $c$ is the speed of light), respectively, and that the total ejected rest mass is in a wide range $10^{-4}$ -- $10^{-2}M_{\odot}$, which depends strongly on the EOS, the total mass, and the mass ratio. The total kinetic energy ejected is also in a wide range between $10^{49}$ and $10^{51} {\rm ergs}$. The numerical results suggest that for a binary of canonical total mass $2.7M_{\odot}$, the outflow could generate an electromagnetic signal observable by the planned telescopes through the production of heavy-element unstable nuclei via the $r$-process or through the formation of blast waves during the interaction with the interstellar matter, if the EOS and mass of the binary are favorable ones.