Compact-object Formation, Retention, and Growth through Accretion onto Gas-embedded White Dwarfs/Neutron Stars in Gas-enriched Globular Clusters

Observations of pulsars in globular clusters (GCs) give evidence that more than >10%–20% of neutron stars (NSs) that ever formed in GCs were retained there. However, the velocity distribution of field pulsars peaks at 5–10 times the escape velocities of GCs. Consequently, only a small fraction of GC NSs should have been retained, which is potentially difficult to explain even accounting for low-velocity NSs formed through electron-capture supernovae (SNe). Thus, too few low-velocity NSs should have been retained, giving rise to the NS retention problem in GCs. Here we suggest a novel solution, in which the progenitors of most GC NSs were ONe white dwarfs (WDs) that accreted ambient intracluster gas and formed low-velocity NSs through accretion-induced collapse (AIC). The existence of an early gas-enriched environment in GCs is supported by observations of multiple stellar populations in GCs. It is thought that 10–100s of megayears after the formation of the first generation of stars, and after ONe WDs were already formed, GCs were replenished with gas, which formed a second generation of stars. Accretion of such replenished gas onto the ONe WDs catalyzed the AIC processes. The number of AIC-formed NSs is then sufficient to explain the large number of NSs retained in GCs. Similar processes might also drive CO WDs to produce Type Ia SNe or to merge and form NSs and similarly drive NSs to AIC and mergers producing BHs. Moreover, the wide variety of gas-catalyzed binary mergers and explosive transients suggested to occur in the gas-rich environments of an active galactic nucleus disk could similarly, and even more efficiently, occur in second-generation gas in GCs.