The dynamical evolution of stellar black holes in globular clusters

TLDR: In this paper, the authors investigate the long-term dynamical evolution of GCs containing large numbers of stellar-mass black holes (BHs), and they find that significant numbers of BHs (up to ~103) are retained all the way to the present.

Abstract: Our current understanding of the stellar initial mass function and massive star evolution suggests that young globular clusters (GCs) may have formed hundreds to thousands of stellar-mass black holes (BHs), the remnants of stars with initial masses from ~20-100 M ☉. Birth kicks from supernova explosions may eject some BHs from their birth clusters, but most should be retained. Using a Monte Carlo method we investigate the long-term dynamical evolution of GCs containing large numbers of stellar BHs. We describe numerical results for 42 models, covering a broad range of realistic initial conditions, including up to 1.6 × 106 stars. In almost all models we find that significant numbers of BHs (up to ~103) are retained all the way to the present. This is in contrast to previous theoretical expectations that most BHs should be ejected dynamically within a few gigayears The main reason for this difference is that core collapse driven by BHs (through the Spitzer mass segregation instability) is easily reverted through three-body processes, and involves only a small number of the most massive BHs, while lower-mass BHs remain well-mixed with ordinary stars far from the central cusp. Thus the rapid segregation of stellar BHs does not lead to a long-term physical separation of most BHs into a dynamically decoupled inner core, as often assumed previously. Combined with the recent detections of several BH X-ray binary candidates in Galactic GCs, our results suggest that stellar BHs could still be present in large numbers in many GCs today, and that they may play a significant role in shaping the long-term dynamical evolution and the present-day dynamical structure of many clusters.