Stability of mass transfer from massive giants: double black hole binary formation and ultraluminous X-ray sources
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mass transfer in binaries with massive donors and compact companions, when the donors rapidly evolve after their main sequence, determines the formation rates of merging double stellar-mass black hole (BH) binaries formed outside clusters. This mass transfer was previously postulated to be unstable and was expected to lead to a common envelope event. The common envelope event then ends with either the merger of the two stars or formation of a binary that eventually may become a merging double BH. We revisit the stability of this mass transfer and find an unanticipated third outcome: for a large range of binary orbital separations, this mass transfer is stable. This newly found stability allows us to reconcile the empirical rate obtained by LIGO, 9-240 Gpc−3 yr−1, with the theoretical rate for double BH binary mergers predicted by population synthesis studies by excluding a channel that predicts a merger rate above 1000 Gpc−3 yr−1. Furthermore, the stability of the mass transfer leads to the formation of ultraluminous X-ray sources. The theoretically predicted formation rates of bright ultraluminous X-ray sources powered by a stellar-mass BH are high enough to explain the number of observed bright ultraluminous X-ray sources.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".