Related papers: Tearing up the disc: misaligned accretion on to a …
We study the expected distribution of massive black hole (MBH) spins and its evolution with cosmic time in the context of hierarchical galaxy formation theories. Our model uses Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy in a LCDM…
We analyse the evolution of a mildly inclined circumbinary disc that orbits an eccentric orbit binary by means of smoother particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations and linear theory. We show that the alignment process of an initially…
We present an accretion cycle which can explain state transitions and other observed phenomena in black hole X-ray binaries. This model is based on the process of disc tearing, where individual rings of gas break off the disc and precess…
Supermassive black hole binaries are likely to accrete interstellar gas through a circumbinary disk. Shortly before merger, the inner portions of this circumbinary disk are subject to general relativistic effects. To study this regime, we…
We present the results of non linear, hydrodynamic simulations, in three dimensions, of the tidal perturbation of accretion discs in binary systems where the orbit is circular and not necessarily coplanar with the disc mid-plane. The…
Tidal disruption events, which occur when a star is shredded by the tidal field of a supermassive black hole, provide a means of fueling black hole accretion. Here we show, using a combination of three body orbit integrations and…
Binary black hole (BBH) evolution in the discs of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is a promising channel for gravitational wave (GW)-driven mergers. It is however unclear whether binaries interacting with the surrounding disc undergo orbital…
In this letter we study the eccentricity evolution of a massive black hole (MBH) binary (MBHB) embedded in a rotating stellar cusp. Following the observation that stars on counter-rotating (with respect to the MBHB) orbits extract angular…
Spin--orbit misalignment in coalescing compact binaries affects their gravitational radiation waveforms. When the misalignment angles are large (>30 degrees), the detection efficiency of the coalescence events can decrease significantly if…
We study the orbital evolution and accretion history of massive black hole (MBH) pairs in rotationally supported circumnuclear discs up to the point where MBHs form binary systems. Our simulations have high resolution in mass and space…
Binary systems exert a gravitational torque on misaligned discs orbiting them, causing differential precession which may produce disc warping and tearing. While this is well understood for gas-only discs, misaligned cirumbinary discs of gas…
We study the formation of accretion disks resulting from dynamical three dimensional binary coalescence calculations, where a neutron star is tidally disrupted before being swallowed by its black hole companion. By subsequently assuming…
Hierarchical structure formation inevitably leads to the formation of supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) with a sub-parsec separation in galactic nuclei. However, to date there has been no unambiguous detection of such systems. In an…
The majority of solar-type stars reside in multiple systems, especially binaries. They form in dense cores of molecular clouds that are observed to be significantly magnetized. Our previous study shows that magnetic braking can tighten the…
Mergers are fundamental to the standard paradigm of galaxy evolution, and provide a natural formation mechanism for supermassive black hole binaries. The formation process of such a binary can have a direct impact on the rate at which stars…
When an accretion disk surrounds a binary rotating in the same sense, the binary exerts strong torques on the gas. Analytic work in the 1D approximation indicated that these torques sharply diminish or even eliminate accretion from the disk…
We construct evolutionary tracks for massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) embedded in a surrounding distribution of stars. The dynamics of the binary is evolved by taking into account the erosion of the central stellar cusp bound to the…
Martin & Lubow (2017) showed through simulations that an initially tilted disc around an eccentric binary can evolve to polar alignment in which the disc lies perpendicular to the binary orbital plane. We apply linear theory to show both…
In this work, we use general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations to explore the effect of spin orientation on the dynamics of gas in the vicinity of merging black holes. We present a suite of eight simulations of unequal-mass,…
Accreting black holes (BHs) produce intense radiation and powerful relativistic jets, which are affected by the BH's spin magnitude and direction. While thin disks might align with the BH spin axis via the Bardeen-Petterson effect, this…