An Eccentric Circumbinary Accretion Disk and the Detection of Binary Massive Black Holes

By A. MacFadyen, Milos Milosavljevic. 2006

293 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a two-dimensional grid-based hydrodynamic simulation of a thin, viscous, locally isothermal corotating disk orbiting an equal-mass Newtonian binary point mass on a fixed circular orbit. We study the structure of the disk after multiple viscous times. The binary maintains a central hole in the viscously relaxed disk with radius equal to about twice the binary semimajor axis. Disk surface density within the hole is reduced by orders of magnitude relative to the density in the disk bulk. The inner truncation of the disk resembles the clearing of a gap in a protoplanetary disk. An initially circular disk becomes elliptical and then eccentric. Disturbances in the disk contain a component that is stationary in the rotating frame in which the binary is at rest; this component is a two-armed spiral density wave. We measure the distribution of the binary torque in the disk and find that the strongest positive torque is exerted inside the central low-density hole. We make connection with the linear theory of disk forcing at outer Lindblad resonances (OLRs) and find that the measured torque density distribution is consistent with forcing at the 3:2 (m = 2) OLR, well within the central hole. We also measure the time dependence of the rate at which gas accretes across the hole and find quasi-periodic structure. We discuss implications for variability and detection of active galactic nuclei containing a binary massive black hole.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4848035a80f7db2cdad921a000f9ecf2eae58169

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

BINARY BLACK HOLE ACCRETION FROM A CIRCUMBINARY DISK: GAS DYNAMICS INSIDE THE CENTRAL CAVITY (2013, methodology): “Prior numerical simulations have been performed in 2D (MacFadyen & Milosavljević 2008) (hereafter MM08), (Cuadra et al. 2009; D’Orazio et al. 2012) and in 3D (Hayasaki et al. 2007; Farris et al. 2011, 2012; Noble et al. 2012; Shi et al. 2012; Roedig et al. 2012; Bode et al. 2012; Giacomazzo et al.…”
A Population of Short-Period Variable Quasars from PTF as Supermassive Black Hole Binary Candidates (2016, background): “…may produce more “bursty” light curves, as a result of periodic fluctuations in the accretion rate onto the BHs (Hayasaki, Mineshige & Sudou 2007; MacFadyen & Milosavljević 2008; Roedig et al. 2012; Noble et al. 2012; D’Orazio, Haiman & MacFadyen 2013; Farris et al. 2014, 2015; Shi & Krolik…”
Accretion into the central cavity of a circumbinary disc (2012, background): “(MacFadyen & Milosavljević 2008, hereafter MM08) have run 2D hydrodynamical simulations for an equal-mass binary.”
THE POPULATION OF VISCOSITY- AND GRAVITATIONAL WAVE-DRIVEN SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE BINARIES AMONG LUMINOUS ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2009, methodology): “Numerical simulations indeed suggest residual gas inflow into the cavity (Artymowicz & Lubow 1996; MacFadyen & Milosavljević 2008; Hayasaki et al. 2007; Cuadra et al. 2009), which may plausibly accrete onto the BHs (with both BHs possibly forming their smaller individual accretion disks; Hayasaki…”
Evolution of binary black holes in self gravitating discs. Dissecting the torques (2012, methodology): “…discs, exploiting a variety of analytical and numerical techniques (Ivanov et al. 1999; Armitage & Natarajan 2002, 2005; Hayasaki et al. 2007, 2008; MacFadyen & Milosavljević 2008; Hayasaki 2009; Cuadra et al. 2009; Lodato et al. 2009; Nixon et al. 2011; Roedig et al. 2011; Shi et al. 2011).”
Massive black hole binary mergers within subparsec scale gas discs (2008, background): “…likely to be important for SMBH binary mergers, provided that the mass of gas in the disc is roughly of the same order of magnitude as the mass in black holes (Gould & Rix, 2000; Armitage & Natarajan, 2002; Escala et al., 2005; Dotti et al., 2007; MacFadyen & Milosavljević, 2008; Hayasaki, 2008).”
Assisted inspirals of stellar mass black holes embedded in AGN discs: solving the ‘final au problem’ (2016, background): “Snapshots of the disk c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 torques have been measured in a few of the above simulations, and suggest that the orbital decay is efficient (MacFadyen & Milosavljević 2008; Cuadra et al. 2009; Roedig et al. 2011; D’Orazio, Haiman & MacFadyen 2013).”
THREE-DIMENSIONAL MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF CIRCUMBINARY ACCRETION DISKS: DISK STRUCTURES AND ANGULAR MOMENTUM TRANSPORT (2011, methodology): “…disks with various binary mass ratios using either smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH; Artymowicz & Lubow 1996; Escala et al. 2005; Cuadra et al. 2009; Dotti et al. 2009) or grid-based methods (Bryden et al. 1999; Günther & Kley 2002; MacFadyen & Milosavljević 2008; de Val-Borro et al. 2011).”
Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “…the system down to the gravitational wave inspiral domain (Armitage and Natarajan, 2005, Cuadra et al., 2009, Gould and Rix, 2000, Hayasaki et al., 2008, Hayasaki and Okazaki, 2009, Ivanov et al., 1999, MacFadyen and Milosavljević, 2008) if the gas does not fragment in stars (Lodato et al., 2009).”