Speaker
Mario Spera
Description
After the recent discovery of the first binary black hole
mergers, the scientfic
community is drawing growing attention to the study of the
formation and the
coalescence of compact object binary systems. Modeling the
formation and the
dynamical evolution of such fascinating systems is
fundamental to interpret the
forthcoming gravitational-wave detections and to make
predictions on the nature
of the merging progenitors. Still, our knowledge of the link
between progenitor
stars and their compact remnants is hampered by the
uncertainties we have on
stellar evolution processes (e.g. stars' mass-loss through
stellar winds) and
on the supernova explosion mechanism. In this talk, I
present the mass spectrum
of compact remnants I obtained using the new population
synthesis code SEVN,
considering up-to-date stellar evolution models and
up-to-date prescriptions to
model the supernova explosion. In particular, I discuss the
occurrence of pulsational
pair-instability supernovae and their effect on the compact
remnant mass spectrum.
I also discuss the implications of our predictions for the
expected
number of compact objects and for the merger rates of
compact object binaries
in several astrophysical systems, as a function of metallicity.
