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Related papers: Eccentric evolution of SMBH binaries

200 papers

Many galaxies are expected to harbor binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in their centers. Their interaction with the surrounding gas results in accretion and exchange of angular momentum via tidal torques, facilitating binary inspiral.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-08-24 Roman R. Rafikov

We address the orbital distribution of stars in merging nuclear star clusters (NSCs) and the subsequent effects on supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) evolution. We ran direct-summation $N$-body simulations with different initial…

We present an investigation into how sensitive the last orbits and merger of binary black hole systems are to the presence of spurious radiation in the initial data. Our numerical experiments consist of a binary black hole system starting…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2008-11-26 Tanja Bode , Deirdre Shoemaker , Frank Herrmann , Ian Hinder

Eccentric binary black holes (BBHs) formed through dynamical interactions can significantly contribute to gravitational wave (GW) detections. In this work, we present a simulated catalog of dynamically-formed, stellar-mass BBHs in the local…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-28 Zeyuan Xuan , Smadar Naoz , Kyle Kremer , Michael L. Katz , Bence Kocsis , Erez Michaely

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous in galaxies with a sizable mass. It is expected that a pair of SMBHs originally in the nuclei of two merging galaxies would form a binary and eventually coalesce via a burst of gravitational…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-09-21 Fazeel M. Khan , Davide Fiacconi , Lucio Mayer , Peter Berczik , Andreas Just

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) are thought to grow through accretion of matter and mergers. Models of SMBH mergers have long suffered the final parsec problem, where SMBH binaries may stall before energy loss from gravitational waves (GW)…

We revisit the population properties of neutron star-black hole (NSBH) mergers using low-mass compact binary coalescences reported through GWTC-4. Employing pyEFPE, an inspiral-only waveform model that captures both orbital eccentricity and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-25 Gonzalo Morras , Geraint Pratten , Patricia Schmidt

Binary supermassive black holes form naturally in galaxy mergers, but their long-term evolution is uncertain. In spherical galaxies, N-body simulations show that binary evolution stalls at separations much too large for significant emission…

Astrophysics · Physics 2010-11-11 Peter Berczik , David Merritt , Rainer Spurzem , Hans-Peter Bischof

We investigate the evolution of supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries and the possibility that their merger is facilitated by ultralight dark matter (ULDM). When ULDM is the main dark matter (DM) constituent of a galaxy, its wave nature…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-04-16 Benjamin C. Bromley , Pearl Sandick , Barmak Shams Es Haghi

In this {\it Letter} we calculate the fraction of highly eccentric binary black hole (BBH) mergers resulting from binary-single interactions. Using an $N$-body code that includes post-Newtonian correction terms, we show that $\gtrsim 1\%$…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-05-24 Johan Samsing , Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

It has long been thought that nuclear star clusters (NSCs) cannot co-exist with the most massive supermassive black holes (SMBHs), since SMBH mergers - unavoidable for the most massive systems - would scatter away NSC stars. However,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-09-30 Nader Khonji , Alessia Gualandris , Justin I. Read , Walter Dehnen

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are the products of frequent galaxy mergers. The coalescence of the SMBHBs is a distinct source of gravitational wave (GW) radiation. The detections of the strong GW radiation and their possible…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-03 Shuo Li , F. K. Liu , Peter Berczik , Xian Chen , Rainer Spurzem

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth plausibly occurs via runaway astrophysical black hole mergers in nuclear star clusters that form intermediate mass black hole seeds at high redshifts. Such a model yields an order-of-magnitude higher…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-18 Konstantinos Kritos , Joseph Silk

In this paper we consider a scenario where the currently observed hypervelocity stars in our Galaxy have been ejected from the Galactic center as a result of dynamical interactions with an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) orbiting the…

Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) that are observed in the Galactic halo, are believed to be accelerated to large velocities by a process of tidal disruption of binary stars passing close to a supermassive black hole (SMBH) which resides in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-09-28 Ladislav Subr , Jaroslav Haas

Recent simulations show that the eccentricity of supermassive binary black hole with intermediate mass ratio could grow toward near unity through gravitational interaction with the stellar background in the merging remnant after two…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-12-27 Wenshuai Liu

Despite solid theoretical and observational grounds for the pairing of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) after galaxy mergers, definitive evidence for the existence of close (sub-parsec) separation SMBH binaries (SMBHBs) approaching merger…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-10-30 Daniel J. D'Orazio , Maria Charisi

We study the formation of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary and the shrinking of the separation of the two holes to sub-pc scales starting from a realistic major merger between two gas-rich spiral galaxies with mass comparable to our…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-30 Damien Chapon , Lucio Mayer , Romain Teyssier

Intermediate-mass galaxies, including the Milky Way, typically host both a supermassive black hole (SMBH) and a nuclear stellar cluster (NSC). Binaries in an NSC evolve via close encounters with surrounding stars and secular processes…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-22 Arn Marklund , Ross P. Church , Alessandro A. Trani

We study the effect of external companion on the orbital and spin evolution of merging black-hole (BH) binaries. An sufficiently close by and inclined companion can excite Lidov-Kozai (LK) eccentricity oscillations in the binary, thereby…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-09-05 Bin Liu , Dong Lai