English

Modified evolution of stellar binaries from supermassive black hole binaries

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2017-02-01 v1

Abstract

The evolution of main sequence binaries resided in the galactic centre is influenced a lot by the central super massive black hole (SMBH). Due to this perturbation, the stars in a dense environment are likely to experience mergers or collisions through secular or non-secular interactions. In this work, we study the dynamics of the stellar binaries at galactic center, perturbed by another distant SMBH. Geometrically, such a four-body system is supposed to be decomposed into the inner triple (SMBH-star-star) and the outer triple (SMBH-stellar binary-SMBH). We survey the parameter space and determine the criteria analytically for the stellar mergers and the tidal disruption events (TDEs). For a relative distant and equal masses SMBH binary, the stars have more opportunities to merge as a result from the Lidov-Kozai(LK) oscillations in the inner triple. With a sample of tight stellar binaries, our numerical experiments reveal that a significant fraction of the binaries, ~70 per cent, experience merger eventually. Whereas the majority of the stellar TDEs are likely to occur at a close periapses to the SMBH, induced by the outer Kozai effect. The tidal disruptions are found numerically as many as ~10 per cent for a close SMBH binary that is enhanced significantly than the one without the external SMBH. These effects require the outer perturber to have an inclined orbit (>=40 degree) relatively to the inner orbital plane and may lead to a burst of the extremely astronomical events associated with the detection of the SMBH binary.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.04580,
  title  = {Modified evolution of stellar binaries from supermassive black hole binaries},
  author = {Bin Liu and Yi-Han Wang and Ye-Fei Yuan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.04580},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

12 pages, 9 figures, MNRAS in press

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:51:55.671Z