Accretion onto a Supermassive Black Hole Binary Before Merger
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2023
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| _version_ | 1866913197997424640 |
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| author | Avara, Mark J. Krolik, Julian H. Campanelli, Manuela Noble, Scott C. Bowen, Dennis Ryu, Taeho |
| author_facet | Avara, Mark J. Krolik, Julian H. Campanelli, Manuela Noble, Scott C. Bowen, Dennis Ryu, Taeho |
| contents | While supermassive binary black holes inspiral toward merger they may also experience significant accretion of matter from a surrounding disk. We study the dynamics of this system, simultaneously describing the evolving spacetime and magnetized plasma, and present the first relativistic calculation simulating two equal-mass, non-spinning black holes as they inspiral from a $20M$ ($G=c=1$) initial separation almost to merger, $\simeq 9M$ ($M$=binary mass). Our dynamical results imply important observational consequences: for instance, the accretion rate $\dot M$ onto the black holes first decreases and then reaches a plateau, dropping by only a factor of $\sim 3$ despite the rapid inspiral. An estimated bolometric light curve thus suggests some merging SMBBHs may be quite luminous past the predicted decoupling from the circumbinary disk. The minidisks through which the accretion reaches the black holes are very non-standard: Reynolds, not Maxwell, stresses dominate, and they oscillate between two states. In one part of the cycle, ``sloshing" streams transfer mass from one minidisk to the other through the L1 point at a rate $\sim 0.1\times$ the accretion rate, carrying kinetic energy at a rate that can be as large as the peak minidisk bolometric luminosity. We also discover that episodic accretion drives minidisks with time-varying tilts. The unsigned poloidal magnetic flux on the black hole event horizon is roughly constant at a dimensionless level $ϕ\sim 2-3$, but doubles just before merger; if the black holes had significant spin, this flux indicates the potential for powerful jets with variability driven by binary dynamics, another prediction of potentially unique EM signatures. This simulation is the first to employ our multipatch infrastructure \pwmhd, decreasing computational expense to $\sim 3\%$ of conventional single-grid methods' cost. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_18538 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Accretion onto a Supermassive Black Hole Binary Before Merger Avara, Mark J. Krolik, Julian H. Campanelli, Manuela Noble, Scott C. Bowen, Dennis Ryu, Taeho High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology While supermassive binary black holes inspiral toward merger they may also experience significant accretion of matter from a surrounding disk. We study the dynamics of this system, simultaneously describing the evolving spacetime and magnetized plasma, and present the first relativistic calculation simulating two equal-mass, non-spinning black holes as they inspiral from a $20M$ ($G=c=1$) initial separation almost to merger, $\simeq 9M$ ($M$=binary mass). Our dynamical results imply important observational consequences: for instance, the accretion rate $\dot M$ onto the black holes first decreases and then reaches a plateau, dropping by only a factor of $\sim 3$ despite the rapid inspiral. An estimated bolometric light curve thus suggests some merging SMBBHs may be quite luminous past the predicted decoupling from the circumbinary disk. The minidisks through which the accretion reaches the black holes are very non-standard: Reynolds, not Maxwell, stresses dominate, and they oscillate between two states. In one part of the cycle, ``sloshing" streams transfer mass from one minidisk to the other through the L1 point at a rate $\sim 0.1\times$ the accretion rate, carrying kinetic energy at a rate that can be as large as the peak minidisk bolometric luminosity. We also discover that episodic accretion drives minidisks with time-varying tilts. The unsigned poloidal magnetic flux on the black hole event horizon is roughly constant at a dimensionless level $ϕ\sim 2-3$, but doubles just before merger; if the black holes had significant spin, this flux indicates the potential for powerful jets with variability driven by binary dynamics, another prediction of potentially unique EM signatures. This simulation is the first to employ our multipatch infrastructure \pwmhd, decreasing computational expense to $\sim 3\%$ of conventional single-grid methods' cost. |
| title | Accretion onto a Supermassive Black Hole Binary Before Merger |
| topic | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.18538 |