Binary Black Hole Mergers from Field Triples: Properties, Rates, and the Impact of Stellar Evolution

Antonini, Fabio; Toonen, Silvia; Hamers, Adrian S.

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa6f5e

Cited by 314 publications

(284 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(84 reference statements)

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“…One potential concern from this simplification is that binaries might merge during the main sequence before they become compact objects (e.g., Antonini et al 2017). We have checked, however, that most BH-BH mergers, 77% and 75% for ǫ z = 0.1 and 1 respectively, occurred after a time that was longer than the main sequence lifetime of both binary components, meaning that these might have avoided an unwanted merger prior to the formation of the two BHs.…”

Section: Merger Of Compact-object Binaries and Implications For Gravimentioning

confidence: 99%

Greatly Enhanced Merger Rates of Compact-object Binaries in Non-spherical Nuclear Star Clusters

Petrovich

Antonini

2017

ApJ

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The Milky Way and a significant fraction of galaxies are observed to host a central Massive Black Hole (MBH) embedded in a non-spherical nuclear star cluster. We study the secular orbital evolution of compact-object binaries in these environments and characterize the excitation of extremely large eccentricities that can lead to mergers by gravitational radiation. We find that the eccentricity excitation occurs most efficiently when the nodal precession timescale of the binary's orbit around the MBH due to the non-spherical cluster becomes comparable (within a factor of ∼ 10) to the timescale on which the binary is torqued by the MBH due to the Lidov-Kozai (LK) mechanism. We show that in this regime the perturbations due to the cluster increase the fraction of systems that reach extreme eccentricities (1 − e ∼ 10 −4 − 10 −6 ) by a factor of ∼ 10 − 100 compared to the idealized case of a spherical cluster, increasing the merger rates of compact objects by a similar factor. We identify two main channels that lead to this extreme eccentricity excitation: (i) chaotic diffusion of the eccentricities due to resonance overlap; (ii) cluster-driven variations of the mutual inclinations between the binary orbit and its center-of-mass orbit around the MBH, which can intensify the LK oscillations. We estimate that our mechanism can produce black hole-black hole and black hole-neutron star binary merger rates of up to ≈ 15 Gpc −3 yr −1 and ≈ 0.4 Gpc −3 yr −1 , respectively. Thus, we propose the cluster-enhanced Lidov-Kozai mechanism as a new channel for the merger of compact-object binaries, competing with scenarios that invoke isolated binary evolution or dynamical formation in globular clusters.

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Section: Merger Of Compact-object Binaries and Implications For Gravimentioning

confidence: 99%

Greatly Enhanced Merger Rates of Compact-object Binaries in Non-spherical Nuclear Star Clusters

Petrovich

Antonini

2017

ApJ

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181

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“…Our goal is to use such triple systems to illustrate the complex spin dynamics of the individual BHs. We expect that similar spin dynamics may take place in other types of triple systems, e.g., those with much larger initial separations, but experience extreme eccentricity excitation due to non-secular forcing from tertiary companions (Silsbee & Tremaine 2017;Antonini et al 2017 …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such triple BH systems could be a direct product of massive triple stars in the galactic field (Silsbee & Tremaine 2017;Antonini et al 2017), or could be produced dynamically in a dense cluster (Miller & Hamilton 2002;Rodriguez et al 2015;Antonini & Rasio 2016). For binaries formed near the center of a galaxy, the third body could be a supermassive BH (Antonini & Perets 2012;Petrovich & Antonini 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The recent breakthrough in the detection of gravitational waves (GWs) from merging black hole (BH) binaries by advanced LIGO (Abbott et al 2016a(Abbott et al ,b, 2017 has generated renewed interest in understanding the formation mechanisms of compact BH binaries, from the evolution of massive stellar binaries (Lipunov et al 1997;Belczynski et al 2010Belczynski et al , 2016Mandel & de Mink 2016;Lipunov et al 2017) and triples (Silsbee & Tremaine 2017;Antonini et al 2017) in the galactic fields, to dynamical interactions in galactic nuclei (Antonini & Perets 2012;Petrovich & Antonini 2017) and in the dense core of globular clusters (Miller & Hamilton 2002;Rodriguez et al 2015;Chatterjee et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spin–Orbit Misalignment of Merging Black Hole Binaries with Tertiary Companions

Liu

Lai

2017

ApJL

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We study the effect of external companion on the orbital and spin evolution of merging blackhole (BH) binaries. An sufficiently close by and inclined companion can excite Lidov-Kozai (LK) eccentricity oscillations in the binary, thereby shortening its merger time. During such LK-enhanced orbital decay, the spin axis of the BH generally exhibits chaotic evolution, leading to a wide range (0• -180 • ) of final spin-orbit misalignment angle from an initially aligned configuration. For systems that do not experience eccentricity excitation, only modest ( 20• ) spin-orbit misalignment can be produced, and we derive an analytic expression for the final misalignment using the principle of adiabatic invariance. The spin-orbit misalignment directly impacts the gravitational waveform, and can be used to constrain the formation scenarios of BH binaries and dynamical influences of external companions.

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“…The PN dynamics of three body systems is not just an academic curiosity. KozaiLidov resonances [20][21][22][23], first discovered in Newtonian triplets, are believed to be a relevant astrophysical mechanism for the formation of binary systems of stellar-mass BHs (observable by ground-based GW detectors) in dense stellar environments [24,25] or in isolation [26]. It may also play an important role in the formation and evolution of binaries of supermassive BHs [27][28][29][30][31], whose GW signal is targeted by existing pulsar-timing arrays [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] and by the future space-borne interferometer LISA [42].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

About gravitational-wave generation by a three-body system

Bonetti¹,

Barausse²,

Faye³

et al. 2017

Class. Quantum Grav.

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Abstract. We highlight some subtleties that affect naive implementations of quadrupolar and octupolar gravitational waveforms from numerically-integrated trajectories of three-body systems. Some of those subtleties arise from the requirement that the source be contained in its "coordinate near zone" when applying the standard PN formulae for gravitational-wave emission, and from the need to use the non-linear Einstein equations to correctly derive the quadrupole emission formula. We show that some of these subtleties were occasionally overlooked in the literature, with consequences for published results. We also provide prescriptions that lead to correct and robust predictions for the waveforms computed from numerically-integrated orbits.

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Binary Black Hole Mergers from Field Triples: Properties, Rates, and the Impact of Stellar Evolution

Cited by 314 publications

References 56 publications

Greatly Enhanced Merger Rates of Compact-object Binaries in Non-spherical Nuclear Star Clusters

Greatly Enhanced Merger Rates of Compact-object Binaries in Non-spherical Nuclear Star Clusters

Spin–Orbit Misalignment of Merging Black Hole Binaries with Tertiary Companions

About gravitational-wave generation by a three-body system

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