On the black hole content and initial mass function of 47 Tuc
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT The globular cluster (GC) 47 Tuc has recently been proposed to host an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) or a population of stellar mass black holes (BHs). To shed light on its dark content, we present an application of self-consistent multimass models with a varying mass function and content of stellar remnants, which we fit to various observational constraints. Our best-fitting model successfully matches the observables and correctly predicts the radial distribution of millisecond pulsars and their gravitational accelerations inferred from long-term timing observations. The data favours a population of BHs with a total mass of $430^{+386}_{-301}$ M⊙, but the most likely model has very few BHs. Since our models do not include a central IMBH and accurately reproduce the observations, we conclude that there is currently no need to invoke the presence of an IMBH in 47 Tuc. The global present-day mass function inferred is significantly depleted in low-mass stars (power-law slope $\alpha =-0.52^{+0.17}_{-0.16}$). Given the orbit and predicted mass-loss history of this massive GC, the dearth of low-mass stars is difficult to explain with a standard initial mass function (IMF) followed by long-term preferential escape of low-mass stars driven by two-body relaxation, and instead suggests that 47 Tuc may have formed with a bottom-light IMF. We discuss alternative evolutionary origins for the flat mass function and ways to reconcile this with the low BH retention fraction. Finally, by capturing the effect of dark remnants, our method offers a new way to probe the IMF in a GC above the current main-sequence turn-off mass, for which we find a slope of −2.49 ± 0.08.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".