Roman CCS White Paper: Characterizing the Galactic population of isolated black holes

Authors: Casey Y. Lam (UC Berkeley), Natasha Abrams (UC Berkeley), Jeff Andrews (University of Florida), Etienne Bachelet (IPAC), Arash Bahramian (Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy), David Bennett (NASA Goddard, UMd College Park), Valerio Bozza (Salerno University), Floor Broekgaarden (CfA | Harvard & Smithsonian), Sukanya Chakrabarti (University of Alabama, Huntsville), William Dawson (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), Kareem El-Badry (Harvard), Maya Fishbach (CITA, University of Toronto), Giacomo Fragione (CIERA, Northwestern), Scott Gaudi (The Ohio State University), Abhimat Gautam (UCLA), Ryosuke Hirai (Monash University), Daniel Holz (University of Chicago), Matthew Hosek Jr. (UCLA), Macy Huston (Penn State), Tharindu Jayasinghe (UC Berkeley), Samson Johnson (NASA JPL), Daisuke Kawata (University College London), Naoki Koshimoto (Osaka University), Jessica R. Lu (UC Berkeley), Ilya Mandel (Monash University), Shota Miyazaki (JAXA/ISAS), Przemek Mróz (University of Warsaw), Smadar Naoz (UCLA), Clément Ranc (IAP, Sorbonne University), Dominick Rowan (The Ohio State University), Rainer Schödel (IAA-CSIC, Granada, Spain), Tomer Shenar (University of Amsterdam), Josh Simon (Carnegie Observatories), Rachel Street (Las Cumbres Observatory), Takahiro Sumi (Osaka University), Daisuke Suzuki (Osaka University), Sean Terry (UC Berkeley)

arXiv: 2306.12514v2 - DOI (astro-ph.IM)
20 pages. Submitted in response to Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope white paper call: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/ccs_white_papers.html. v2 fixes a typo in Figure 5 axis label (days --> year)
License: CC BY 4.0

Abstract: Although there are estimated to be 100 million isolated black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way, only one has been found so far, resulting in significant uncertainty about their properties. The Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey provides the only opportunity in the coming decades to grow this catalog by order(s) of magnitude. This can be achieved if 1) Roman's astrometric potential is fully realized in the observation strategy and software pipelines, 2) Roman's observational gaps of the Bulge are minimized, and 3) observations with ground-based facilities are taken of the Bulge to fill in gaps during non-Bulge seasons. A large sample of isolated BHs will enable a broad range of astrophysical questions to be answered, such as massive stellar evolution, origin of gravitational wave sources, supernova physics, and the growth of supermassive BHs, maximizing Roman's scientific return.

Submitted to arXiv on 21 Jun. 2023

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