Electromagnetic Precursors to Black Hole–Neutron Star Gravitational Wave Events: Flares and Reconnection-powered Fast Radio Transients from the Late Inspiral

Abstract

The presence of magnetic fields in the late inspiral of black hole–neutron star binaries could lead to potentially detectable electromagnetic precursor transients. Using general-relativistic force-free electrodynamics simulations, we investigate premerger interactions of the common magnetosphere of black hole–neutron star systems. We demonstrate that these systems can feature copious electromagnetic flaring activity, which we find depends on the magnetic field orientation but not on black hole spin. Due to interactions with the surrounding magnetosphere, these flares could lead to fast-radio-burst-like transients and X-ray emission, with ${{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{EM}}\lesssim {10}^{41}{\left({B}_{* }/{10}^{12}\,{\rm{G}}\right)}^{2}\,\mathrm{erg}\,{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}$ as an upper bound on the luminosity, where B _* is the magnetic field strength on the surface of the neutron star.

Keywords

• Astrophysical black holes
• Neutron stars
• Radio transient sources
• Magnetospheric radio emissions
• Plasma astrophysics
• General relativity