Black Hole Mass and Spin Coevolution by Mergers

By S. Hughes, R. Blandford. 2002

191 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Massive black holes appear to be present in the nuclei of almost all galaxies, but their genesis and evolution are not well understood. As astrophysical black holes are completely characterized by their masses and spins, the observed joint distribution of these quantities contains important clues to their history. We examine the coevolution of mass and spin in binary merger growth scenarios. We find that holes are typically spun down by mergers. Rapid rotation results only if the binary's larger member already spins quickly and the merger with the smaller hole is consistently near prograde, or if the binary's mass ratio approaches unity. If, as some observations have suggested, observed black holes spin rapidly, then this limits the importance of merger scenarios for the growth of black holes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/955a318024f74dc04bf80799df49549ea2fb1838

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Citations in the corpus

Accretion-driven evolution of black holes: Eddington ratios, duty cycles and active galaxy fractions (2011, background): “…mergers of their central black holes, making black hole mergers a potentially important source of evolution in the black hole mass function (e.g., Hughes & Blandford 2003; Wyithe & Loeb 2003; Islam et al. 2004; Scannapieco & Oh 2004; Yoo & Miralda-Escudé 2004; Volonteri et al. 2005; Lapi et al.…”
B-mode contamination by synchrotron emission from 3-yr Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data (2006, unknown): “Volonteri et al. (2005; see also Wilson & Colbert, 1995; Hughes & Blandford, 2003) showed that if successive accretion episodes add angular momentum to the growing hole at random angles, then the eventual spin of the hole is small.”
Massive Black Hole Binary Evolution (2004, methodology): “The latter varies from LLSO/m = √ 12M for circular equatorial orbits around a non-spinning hole to LLSO = M(9M) for prograde(retrograde) orbits around a maximally-spinning hole, S1 = M 2.”
Cosmological Black Hole Spin Evolution by Mergers and Accretion (2008, methodology): “Hughes & Blandford (2003) (henceforth HB) estimated the merger remnant’s spin using an extrapolation to comparable-mass binaries of results valid for small mass ratios, q = M2/M1 ≪ 1, showing that mergers typically spin BHs down.”
Grand unification of AGN activity in the ΛCDM cosmology (2009, background): “Indeed, many authors have proposed spin as the physical parameter that determines the radio loudness of an AGN (see Wilson & Colbert 1995; Hughes & Blandford 2003).”
Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Massive Black Hole Binaries: Predictions for LISA and Pulsar Timing Arrays (2002, background): “Hughes & Blandford (2003) find that following a major merger, the remnant is rarely rotating rapidly unless the mass ratio is 1.”
Spin, Accretion, and the Cosmological Growth of Supermassive Black Holes (2004, background): “Minor mergers of massive black holes with smaller holes tend to spin-down the massive hole (Hughes & Blandford 2003; Gammie, Shapiro & McKinney 2004).”
BLACK HOLE SPIN AND THE RADIO LOUD/QUIET DICHOTOMY OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2009, background): “If such a weak variation is to produce a difference of 103 in radio power,7 we need a in the two populations to differ by a factor of ∼30, which does not seem plausible given likely merger histories (Hughes & Blandford 2003; Gammie et al. 2004).”
MONITORING STELLAR ORBITS AROUND THE MASSIVE BLACK HOLE IN THE GALACTIC CENTER (2008, background): “While gas accretion and major mergers can increase the spin, the accretion of SBHs tends to decrease the spin (Hughes & Blandford 2003; Gammie et al. 2004), assuming many random infall events of isotropically distributed SBHs.”
Are LIGO's Black Holes Made from Smaller Black Holes? (2017, background): “The assumption of major mergers differs from the seminal work of Hughes & Blandford (2003), which considered the spin evolution of supermassive BHs as they grow through minor mergers.”
Radio-loud Narrow-Line Type 1 Quasars (2006, background): “Both BH-BH mergers and accretion will affect BH spin (e.g., Merritt 2002, Hughes & Blandford 2003, Volonteri et al. 2005).”
The relation between accretion rate and jet power in X-ray luminous elliptical galaxies (2006, background): “The origin of the jets may be related to the spin of the central black hole (e.g. Rees 1978; Hughes & Blandford 2003).”