Late-time accretion in neutron star mergers: implications for short gamma-ray bursts and kilonovae

We study the long-term (t >> 10 s) evolution of the accretion disk after a neutron star(NS)-NS or NS-black hole merger, taking into account the radioactive heating by r-process nuclei formed in the first few seconds. We find that the cumulative heating eventually exceeds the disk's binding energy at t... Show more