MG11 
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Black Hole-Neutron Star mergers and Short Gamma-Ray Bursts

We discuss the evolution of merging black hole-neutron star binaries that treat the combined spacetime in a nonperturbative general relativistic framework. Using the conformal flatness approximation, we have studied how the location of the tidal disruption radius with respect to the the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) affects the qualitative evolution of the system. When tidal disruption occurs sufficiently far outside the ISCO, mass is transferred unstably from the neutron star to the black hole, resulting in the disruption of the neutron star. When tidal disruption occurs slightly within the ISCO, we find that some of the mass forms an extremely hot disk around the black hole. The resulting configurations in this case are excellent candidates for the progenitors of short-hard gamma ray bursts.