Dynamics of stellar black holes in young star clusters with different metallicities - II. Black hole-black hole binaries

In this paper, we study the formation and dynamical evolution of black hole–black hole (BH– BH) binaries in young star clusters (YSCs), by means of N-body simulations. The simulations include metallicity-dependent recipes for stellar evolution and stellar winds, and have been run for three different metallicities (Z = 0.01, 0.1 and 1 Z). Following recent theoretical models of wind mass-loss and core-collapse supernovae, we assume that the mass of the stellar remnants depends on the metallicity of the progenitor stars. We find that BH–BH binaries form efficiently because of dynamical exchanges: in our simulations, we find about 10 times more BH–BH binaries than double neutron star binaries. The simulated BH–BH binaries form earlier in metal-poor YSCs, which host more massive black holes (BHs) than in metal-rich YSCs. The simulated BH–BH binaries have very large chirp masses (up to 80 M), because the BH mass is assumed to depend on metallicity, and because BHs can grow in mass due to the merger with stars. The simulated BH–BH binaries span a wide range of orbital periods (10−3–107 yr), and only a small fraction of them (0.3 per cent) is expected to merge within a Hubble time. We discuss the estimated merger rate from our simulations and the implications for Advanced VIRGO and LIGO.