Going further

3.5 Going further

Good starting points for further reading can be found in other review articles [289 , 191 ]. Our coverage of compact object coalescence rates has concentrated on empirical methods. Two software packages are freely available which allow the user to synthesize and search radio pulsar populations [123 , 299 , 315 ]. An alternative approach is to undertake a full-blown Monte Carlo simulation of the most likely evolutionary scenarios described in Section 2.6. In this scheme, a population of primordial binaries is synthesized with a number of underlying distribution functions: primary mass, binary mass ratio, orbital period distribution etc. The evolution of both stars is then followed to give a predicted sample of binary systems of all the various types. Although selection effects are not always taken into account in this approach, the final census is usually normalized to the star formation rate.

Numerous population syntheses (most often to populations of binaries where one or both members are NSs) can be found in the literature [99 , 317 , 381 , 292 , 214 , 28 , 29 ]. A group in Moscow has made a web interface to their code [324 ]. Although extremely instructive, the uncertain assumptions about initial conditions, the physics of mass transfer and the kicks applied to the compact object at birth result in a wide range of predicted event rates which are currently broader than the empirical methods [179 , 193 , 180 ]. Ultimately, the detection statistics from the gravitational wave detectors could provide far tighter constraints on the DNS merging rate than the pulsar surveys from which these predictions are made. Very recently [278 ] the results from empirical population constraints and full-blown binary population synthesis codes have been combined to constrain a variety of input parameters and physical conditions. The results of this work are promising, with stringent constraints being placed on the kick distributions, mass-loss fraction during mass transfer and common envelope assumptions.