Possible Indirect Confirmation of the Existence of Pop III Massive Stars by Gravitational Wave

We perform population synthesis simulations for Population III (Pop III) coalescing binary neutron stars (NS-NSs), neutron star - black hole binaries (NS-BHs), and binary black holes (BH-BHs) which merge within the age of the universe. We found that the typical mass of Pop III BH-BHs is $sim 30 rm{M}_{odot}$ so that the inspiral chirp signal of gravitational waves can be detected up to z=0.28 by KAGRA, Adv. LIGO, Adv. Virgo and GEO network. Our simulations suggest that the detection rate of the coalescing Pop III BH-BHs is $140 (68) cdot ({rm SFR}_{rm p}/10^{-2.5} rm{M}_{odot} {rm yr}^{-1} {rm Mpc}^{-3}) cdot {rm Err}_{rm sys} ~{rm events} ~{rm yr}^{-1}$ for the flat (Salpeter) initial mass function (IMF), respectively, where $rm SFR_p$ and $rm Err_{sys}$ are the peak value of the Pop III star formation rate and the possible systematic errors due to the assumptions in Pop III population synthesis, respectively. $rm Err_{sys}=1$ correspond to conventional parameters for Pop I stars. From the observation of the chirp signal of the coalescing Pop III BH-BHs, we can determine both the mass and the redshift of the binary for the cosmological parameters determined by Planck satellite. Our simulations suggest that the cumulative redshift distribution of the coalescing Pop III BH-BHs depends almost only on the cosmological parameters. We might be able to confirm the existence of Pop III massive stars of mass $sim 30~rm M_{odot}$ by the detections of gravitational waves if the merger rate of the Pop III massive BH-BHs dominates that of Pop I BH-BHs.

Radioactively Powered Emission from Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers

Detection of electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave (GW) sources is important to unveil the nature of compact binary coalescences. We perform three-dimensional, time-dependent, multi-frequency radiative transfer simulations for radioactively powered emission from the ejecta of black hole (BH) - neutron star (NS) mergers. Depending on the BH to NS mass ratio, spin of the BH, and equations of state of dense matter, BH-NS mergers can eject more material than NS-NS mergers. In such cases, radioactively powered emission from the BH-NS merger ejecta can be more luminous than that from NS-NS mergers. We show that, in spite of the expected larger distances to BH-NS merger events, observed brightness of BH-NS mergers can be comparable to or even higher than that of NS-NS mergers. We find that, when the tidally disrupted BH-NS merger ejecta are confined to a small solid angle, the emission from BH-NS merger ejecta tends to be bluer than that from NS-NS merger ejecta for a given total luminosity. Thanks to this property, we might be able to distinguish BH-NS merger events from NS-NS merger events by multi-band observations of the radioactively powered emission. In addition to the GW observations, such electromagnetic observations can potentially provide independent information on the nature of compact binary coalescences.