2009
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.14147.x
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Massive black hole binary mergers within subparsec scale gas discs

Abstract: We study the efficiency and dynamics of supermassive black hole binary mergers driven by angular momentum loss to small‐scale gas discs. Such binaries form after major galaxy mergers, but their fate is unclear since hardening through stellar scattering becomes very inefficient at subparsec distances. Gas discs may dominate binary dynamics on these scales, and promote mergers. Using numerical simulations, we investigate the evolution of the semimajor axis and eccentricity of binaries embedded within geometrical… Show more

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Cited by 378 publications
(566 citation statements)
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References 52 publications
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“…Additionally, it is still unclear how Nature bridges the gap between the two theoretically well understood stages of BHB evolution: (i) the dynamical friction driven stage, when the two BHs spiral in toward the centre of the merger remnant down to pc separations and (ii) the final inspiral driven by gravitational waves (GWs), which become efficient when the two BHs are at a separation < ∼ 10 −2 pc. Both dense stellar and gaseous environments have been shown to be effective in extracting the binary energy and angular momentum (see, e.g., Escala et al 2005;Dotti et al 2007;Cuadra et al 2009;Khan et al 2011;Preto et al 2011), likely driving the system to final coalescence (an extensive discussion on the fate of sub-parsec BHBs can be found in Dotti et al 2012). Scenarios involving cold gas are particular appealing not only A&A 545, A127 (2012) because they might produce distinctive observational signatures, but also because cold gas dominates the baryonic content in most galaxies at redshifts higher than one, providing a natural reservoir of energy and angular momentum to drive the BHB towards coalescence.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Additionally, it is still unclear how Nature bridges the gap between the two theoretically well understood stages of BHB evolution: (i) the dynamical friction driven stage, when the two BHs spiral in toward the centre of the merger remnant down to pc separations and (ii) the final inspiral driven by gravitational waves (GWs), which become efficient when the two BHs are at a separation < ∼ 10 −2 pc. Both dense stellar and gaseous environments have been shown to be effective in extracting the binary energy and angular momentum (see, e.g., Escala et al 2005;Dotti et al 2007;Cuadra et al 2009;Khan et al 2011;Preto et al 2011), likely driving the system to final coalescence (an extensive discussion on the fate of sub-parsec BHBs can be found in Dotti et al 2012). Scenarios involving cold gas are particular appealing not only A&A 545, A127 (2012) because they might produce distinctive observational signatures, but also because cold gas dominates the baryonic content in most galaxies at redshifts higher than one, providing a natural reservoir of energy and angular momentum to drive the BHB towards coalescence.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This is a common outcome for simulations of self-gravitating discs which employ the β-cooling prescription (Equation 2) where β 5 (e.g. Gammie 2001;Rice et al 2003Rice et al , 2005Cuadra et al 2009). Figure 4 shows surface density renderings of the discs after t = 1000 t b : in both cases the disc structure is dominated by moderate-order (m ∼ 5-10) spiral density waves.…”
Section: Massive Modelsmentioning
confidence: 97%
“…The code used was a modified version of gadget-2 (Springel 2005). Following the method of Cuadra et al (2009), we have removed the N-body particles from the gravitational tree, and instead compute their gravitational forces via direct summation. This is important as we must correctly resolve the dynamics of the binary in order to be sure our results are not purely numerical in origin.…”
Section: Simulationsmentioning
confidence: 99%
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“…Artymowicz & Lubow 1996;Escala et al 2005;Lodato et al 2009;Cuadra et al 2009;Roedig et al 2012;D'Orazio et al 2013). The simulations of Nixon et al (2012) and Nixon (2012) focussed on circular orbit binaries, with only a few simulations with e 0, in which the eccentricity was always small.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%