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Register a new userFormation of counter-rotating and highly eccentric massive black hole binaries in galaxy mergers
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Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries represent the main target for missions such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and Pulsar Timing Arrays. The understanding of their dynamical evolution prior to coalescence is therefore crucial to improving detection strategies and for the astrophysical interpretation of the gravitational wave data. In this paper, we use high-resolution $N$-body simulations to model the merger of two equal-mass galaxies hosting a central SMBH. In our models, all binaries are initially prograde with respect to the galaxy sense of rotation. But, binaries that form with a high eccentricity, $egtrsim 0.7$, quickly reverse their sense of rotation and become almost perfectly retrograde at the moment of binary formation. The evolution of these binaries proceeds towards larger eccentricities, as expected for a binary hardening in a counter-rotating stellar distribution. Binaries that form with lower eccentricities remain prograde and at comparatively low eccentricities. We study the origin of the orbital flip by using an analytical model that describes the early stages of binary evolution. This model indicates that the orbital plane flip is due to the torque from the triaxial background mass distribution that naturally arises from the galactic merger process. Our results imply the existence of a population of SMBH binaries with a high eccentricity and could have significant implications for the detection of the gravitational wave signal emitted by these systems.
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Using state-of-the-art dynamical simulations of globular clusters, including radiation reaction during black hole encounters and a cosmological model of star cluster formation, we create a realistic population of dynamically-formed binary black hole mergers across cosmic space and time. We show that in the local universe, 10% of these binaries form as the result of gravitational-wave emission between unbound black holes during chaotic resonant encounters, with roughly half of those events having eccentricities detectable by current ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. The mergers that occur inside clusters typically have lower masses than binaries that were ejected from the cluster many Gyrs ago. Gravitational-wave captures from globular clusters contribute 1-2 Gpc^-3 yr^-1 to the binary merger rate in the local universe, increasing to ~10 Gpc^-3 yr^-1 at z~3. Finally, we discuss some of the technical difficulties associated with post-Newtonian scattering encounters, and how care must be taken when measuring the binary parameters during a dynamical capture.
We derive the probability for a newly formed binary black hole (BBH) to undergo an eccentric gravitational wave (GW) merger during binary-single interactions inside a stellar cluster. By integrating over the hardening interactions such a BBH must undergo before ejection, we find that the observable rate of BBH mergers with eccentricity $>0.1$ at $10 rm{Hz}$ relative to the rate of circular mergers can be as high as $sim 5%$ for a typical globular cluster (GC). This further suggests that BBH mergers forming through GW captures in binary-single interactions, eccentric or not, are likely to constitute $sim 10%$ of the total BBH merger rate from GCs. Such GW capture mergers can only be probed with an $N$-body code that includes General Relativistic corrections, which explains why recent Newtonian cluster studies not have been able to resolve this population. Finally, we show that the relative rate of eccentric BBH mergers depends on the compactness of their host cluster, suggesting that an observed eccentricity distribution can be used to probe the origin of BBH mergers.
The astrophysical origin of gravitational wave (GW) transients is a timely open question in the wake of discoveries by LIGO/Virgo. In active galactic nuclei (AGNs), binaries form and evolve efficiently by interaction with a dense population of stars and the gaseous AGN disk. Previous studies have shown that stellar-mass black hole (BH) mergers in such environments can explain the merger rate and the number of suspected hierarchical mergers observed by LIGO/Virgo. The binary eccentricity distribution can provide further information to distinguish between astrophysical models. Here we derive the eccentricity distribution of BH mergers in AGN disks. We find that eccentricity is mainly due to binary-single (BS) interactions, which lead to most BH mergers in AGN disks having a significant eccentricity at $0.01,mathrm{Hz}$, detectable by LISA. If BS interactions occur in isotropic-3D directions, then $8$--$30%$ of the mergers in AGN disks will have eccentricities at $10,mathrm{Hz}$ above $e_{10,rm Hz}gtrsim 0.03$, detectable by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA, while $5$--$17%$ of mergers have $e_{10,rm Hz}geq 0.3$. On the other hand, if BS interactions are confined to the AGN-disk plane due to torques from the disk, with 1-20 intermediate binary states during each interaction, or if BHs can migrate to $lesssim10^{-3},mathrm{pc}$ from the central supermassive black hole, then $10$--$70%$ of the mergers will be highly eccentric ($e_{10,rm Hz} geq 0.3$), consistent with the possible high eccentricity in GW190521.
(Abridged) We review the results of the first multi-scale, hydrodynamical simulations of mergers between galaxies with central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) to investigate the formation of SMBH binaries in galactic nuclei. We demonstrate that strong gas inflows produce nuclear disks at the centers of merger remnants whose properties depend sensitively on the details of gas thermodynamics. In numerical simulations with parsec-scale spatial resolution in the gas component and an effective equation of state appropriate for a starburst galaxy, we show that a SMBH binary forms very rapidly, less than a million years after the merger of the two galaxies. Binary formation is significantly suppressed in the presence of a strong heating source such as radiative feedback by the accreting SMBHs. We also present preliminary results of numerical simulations with ultra-high spatial resolution of 0.1 pc in the gas component. These simulations resolve the internal structure of the resulting nuclear disk down to parsec scales and demonstrate the formation of a central massive object (~ 10^8 Mo) by efficient angular momentum transport. This is the first time that a radial gas inflow is shown to extend to parsec scales as a result of the dynamics and hydrodynamics involved in a galaxy merger, and has important implications for the fueling of SMBHs. Due to the rapid formation of the central clump, the density of the nuclear disk decreases significantly in its outer region, reducing dramatically the effect of dynamical friction and leading to the stalling of the two SMBHs at a separation of ~1 pc. We discuss how the orbital decay of the black holes might continue in a more realistic model which incorporates star formation and the multi-phase nature of the ISM.
We compute the isotropic gravitational wave (GW) background produced by binary supermassive black holes (SBHs) in galactic nuclei. In our model, massive binaries evolve at early times via gravitational-slingshot interaction with nearby stars, and at later times by the emission of GWs. Our expressions for the rate of binary hardening in the stellar regime are taken from the recent work of Vasiliev et al., who show that in the non-axisymmetric galaxies expected to form via mergers, stars are supplied to the center at high enough rates to ensure binary coalescence on Gyr timescales. We also include, for the first time, the extra degrees of freedom associated with evolution of the binarys orbital plane; in rotating nuclei, interaction with stars causes the orientation and the eccentricity of a massive binary to change in tandem, leading in some cases to very high eccentricities (e>0.9) before the binary enters the GW-dominated regime. We argue that previous studies have over-estimated the mean ratio of SBH mass to galaxy bulge mass by factors of 2 - 3. In the frequency regime currently accessible to pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), our assumptions imply a factor 2 - 3 reduction in the characteristic strain compared with the values computed in most recent studies, removing the tension that currently exists between model predictions and the non-detection of GWs.
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