The Kozai Mechanism and the Evolution of Binary Supermassive Black Holes

By O. Blaes, M. Lee, A. Socrates. 2002

250 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We consider the dynamical evolution of bound, hierarchical triples of supermassive black holes that might be formed in the nuclei of galaxies undergoing sequential mergers. The tidal force of the outer black hole on the inner binary produces eccentricity oscillations through the Kozai mechanism, and this can substantially reduce the gravitational wave merger time of the inner binary. We numerically calculate the merger time for a wide range of initial conditions and black hole mass ratios, including the effects of octupole interactions in the triple as well as general relativistic periastron precession in the inner binary. The semimajor axes and the mutual inclination of the inner and outer binaries are the most important factors affecting the merger time. We find that for a random distribution of inclination angles and approximately equal mass black holes, it is possible to reduce the merger time of a near circular inner binary by more than a factor of 10 in over 50% of all cases. We estimate that a typical exterior quadrupole moment from surrounding matter in the galaxy may also be sufficient to excite eccentricity oscillations in supermassive black hole binaries and to accelerate black hole mergers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b77d71a4548c11b5cc5b43bc670fc7d1fd05a3ab

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Citations in the corpus

• Binary Black Hole Mergers from Field Triples: Properties, Rates, and the Impact of Stellar Evolution (2017, methodology): “Any common envelope phase of evolution will likely shrink the inner orbit so that the Lidov-Kozai mechanism will become more strongly suppressed by the relativistic precession of the inner binary orbit (e.g., Blaes et al. 2002).”
• THE ECCENTRIC KOZAI MECHANISM FOR A TEST PARTICLE (2011, background): “Blaes et al. (2002) examine some examples for triples of supermassive black holes.”
• BLACK HOLE MERGERS AND BLUE STRAGGLERS FROM HIERARCHICAL TRIPLES FORMED IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS (2015, methodology): “It can be easily shown that the effectiveness of such extra sources of precession decreases with the ratio a2/a1 (e.g., Blaes et al. 2002), which is consistent with the fact that mergers are more likely to occur for wide inner binaries and close outer orbits.”
• Secular Evolution of Hierarchical Planetary Systems (2002, methodology): “It is straightforward to modify the octopole theory to include any of these effects (see, e.g., Blaes et al. 2002 for relativistic precession).”
• Lidov–Kozai Cycles with Gravitational Radiation: Merging Black Holes in Isolated Triple Systems (2016, unknown): “Resonance Is Not Destroyed By Apsidal Precession Lidov–Kozai oscillations are quenched by the relativistic precession of the inner binary unless (Blaes et al. 2002) ( ) ( ) ( ) < - - < ´ - - - ⎜ ⎟ ⎛ ⎝⎜ ⎞ ⎠⎟ ⎛ ⎝ ⎞ ⎠ ⎛ ⎝⎜ ⎞ ⎠⎟ ⎛ ⎝⎜ ⎞ ⎠⎟ a a c m a e GM e a a a M M m M e e 3 1 4 1 305.6 30 au 40 2…”
• Suppression of extreme orbital evolution in triple systems with short-range forces (2014, methodology): “Harrington (1968); Marchal et al. (1990); Krymolowski & Mazeh (1999); Ford et al. (2000b); Blaes et al. (2002) have derived the orbit-averaged Hamiltonian to octupole order and used the resulting equation of motion to explore some aspects of the evolution of triples.”
• Massive Black Hole Binary Evolution (2004, methodology): “One study [21] estimates that the coalescence time of the dominant binary in hierarchical triples can be reduced by factors of ∼ 10 via the Kozai mechanism.”
• The evolution of hierarchical triple star-systems (2016, background): “These include general relativistic effects (Blaes et al., 2002):”
• Secular Dynamics in Hierarchical Three-Body Systems (2011, methodology): “(B1) Note that this definition differs in sign sign from Ford et al. (2000a), and is consistent with Blaes et al. (2002); Ford et al. (2004).”
• Massive Black Hole Binary Mergers in Dynamical Galactic Environments (2016, background): “In this case, the outer MBH in the triple system may accelerate the hardening of the inner binary, driving it to coalescence (e.g. Blaes et al. 2002).”
• ECCENTRICITY GROWTH AND ORBIT FLIP IN NEAR-COPLANAR HIERARCHICAL THREE-BODY SYSTEMS (2013, background): “…an important element both in the growth of black holes at the centre of dense star clusters and the formation of short-period binaries black hole (Blaes et al. 2002; Miller & Hamilton 2002; Wen 2003) and tidal disruption events (Chen et al. 2009, 2011; Wegg & Bode 2011; Bode & Wegg 2013; Li et…”
• The Eccentric Kozai-Lidov Effect and Its Applications (2016, background): “In this scenario, black hole binary high orbital eccentricity induced by the outer perturber can lead to a more efficient merger rate, due to GW emission (e.g., Blaes et al. 2002).”