Gravitational-wave Sources from Mergers of Binary Black Holes Catalyzed by Flyby Interactions in the Field

Michaely, Erez; Perets, Hagai B.

doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ab5b9b

Cited by 47 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…Stellar-mass BBHs detected by LIGO-Virgo have also been proposed to originate from the merger of central BHs in extremely low-mass ultradwarf galaxies that merge at z 1 (Conselice et al 2020). Ultrawide BH binaries and high-order systems in the galactic field that are perturbed from stellar flybys may also excite eccentricity in the BBH system and cause it to merge within the Hubble time (Michaely & Perets 2019. Finally, primordially formed BHs have also been proposed as sources of merging BBHs and have been suggested as candidates for dark matter (Bird et al 2016;Sasaki et al 2018;Clesse & Garcia-Bellido 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways

Zevin

Bavera

Berry

et al. 2021

ApJ

277

259

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The second LIGO-Virgo catalog of gravitational-wave (GW) transients has more than quadrupled the observational sample of binary black holes. We analyze this catalog using a suite of five state-of-the-art binary black hole population models covering a range of isolated and dynamical formation channels and infer branching fractions between channels as well as constraints on uncertain physical processes that impact the observational properties of mergers. Given our set of formation models, we find significant differences between the branching fractions of the underlying and detectable populations, and that the diversity of detections suggests that multiple formation channels are at play. A mixture of channels is strongly preferred over any single channel dominating the detected population: an individual channel does not contribute to more than 70% of the observational sample of binary black holes. We calculate the preference between the natal spin assumptions and common-envelope efficiencies in our models, favoring natal spins of isolated black holes of 0.1, and marginally preferring common-envelope efficiencies of 2.0 while strongly disfavoring highly inefficient common envelopes. We show that it is essential to consider multiple channels when interpreting GW catalogs, as inference on branching fractions and physical prescriptions becomes biased when contributing formation scenarios are not considered or incorrect physical prescriptions are assumed. Although our quantitative results can be affected by uncertain assumptions in model predictions, our methodology is capable of including models with updated theoretical considerations and additional formation channels.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways

Zevin

Bavera

Berry

et al. 2021

ApJ

277

259

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“…Active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks have been proposed as promising locations for producing some of the detected stellar mass binary black hole (BBH) mergers (McKernan et al 2012(McKernan et al , 2014(McKernan et al , 2018(McKernan et al , 2019Bartos et al 2017b;Stone et al 2017;Leigh et al 2018;Secunda et al 2019Secunda et al , 2020Yang et al 2019a,b;Gröbner et al 2020;Tagawa et al 2020a,b;Abbott et al 2020b). Other fa-vored scenarios include isolated binary evolution in a binary star system (e.g., Belczynski et al 2010;Mandel & de Mink 2016;Belczynski et al 2016), dynamical evolution of triple or quadruple systems (e.g., Antonini et al 2017;Liu & Lai 2017Michaely & Perets 2019;Fragione & Kocsis 2019), and dynamical formation in which the black holes (BHs) undergo a chance encounter in a dense stellar environment such as galactic nuclei, globular clusters or open clusters (e.g., O'Leary et al 2009;Wang et al 2016;Banerjee 2017;Rodriguez et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orbital evolution of binary black holes in active galactic nucleus disks: a disk channel for binary black hole mergers?

Li,

Dempsey,

et al. 2021

Preprint

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We perform a series of high-resolution 2D hydrodynamical simulations of equal-mass binary black holes (BBHs) embedded in active galactic nucleus (AGN) accretion disks to study whether these binaries can be driven to merger by the surrounding gas. We find that the gravitational softening adopted for the BBH has a profound impact on this result. When the softening is less than ten percent of the binary separation, we show that, in agreement with recent simulations of isolated equalmass binaries, prograde BBHs expand in time rather than contract. Eventually, however, the binary separation becomes large enough that the tidal force of the central AGN disrupts them. Only when the softening is relatively large do we find that prograde BBHs harden. We determine through detailed analysis of the binary torque, that this dichotomy is due to a loss of spiral structure in the circum-single disks orbiting each BH when the softening is a significant fraction of the binary separation. Properly resolving these spirals -both with high resolution and small softening -results in a significant source of binary angular momentum. Only for retrograde BBHs do we find consistent hardening, regardless of softening, as these BBHs lack the important spiral structure in their circum-single disks. This suggests that the gas-driven inspiral of retrograde binaries can produce a population of compact BBHs in the gravitational-wave-emitting regime in AGN disks, which may contribute a large fraction to the observed BBH mergers.

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“…There have been many proposed formation channels, both in dense stellar environments and in isolation. These include isolated binary stellar evolution of two massive stars either through common-envelope evolution (Dominik et al 2012(Dominik et al , 2013Belczynski et al 2016aBelczynski et al , 2016bSpera et al 2019), chemically homogeneous evolution of close binaries (de Mink & Mandel 2016; Mandel & de Mink 2016), or catalyzed by flyby perturbations in the field (Michaely & Perets 2019, 2020, or dynamical assembly in dense stellar environments, including young and open star clusters (Banerjee 2017(Banerjee , 2018a(Banerjee , 2018b(Banerjee , 2020Di Carlo et al 2019;Santoliquido et al 2020) Hamers et al 2018;Hoang et al 2018;Fragione et al 2019a;Rasskazov & Kocsis 2019;Stephan et al 2019), and in active galactic nucleus (AGN) (Bartos et al 2017;Stone et al 2017;Tagawa et al 2018Tagawa et al , 2020aTagawa et al , 2020bMcKernan et al 2020). Another proposed scenario involves primordial BHs merging in the halos of galaxies (e.g., Bird et al 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Hole Mergers from Hierarchical Triples in Dense Star Clusters

Martinez

Fragione

Kremer

et al. 2020

ApJ

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Hierarchical triples are expected to be produced by the frequent binary-mediated interactions in the cores of globular clusters. In some of these triples, the tertiary companion can drive the inner binary to merger following large eccentricity oscillations, as a result of the eccentric Kozai-Lidov mechanism. In this paper, we study the dynamics and merger rates of black hole (BH) hierarchical triples, formed via binary-binary encounters in the CMC Cluster Catalog, a suite of cluster simulations with present-day properties representative of the Milky Way's globular clusters. We compare the properties of the mergers from triples to the other merger channels in dense star clusters, and show that triple systems do not produce significant differences in terms of mass and effective spin distribution. However, they represent an important pathway for forming eccentric mergers, which could be detected by LIGO-Virgo/Kamioka Gravitational-Wave Detector (LVK), and future missions such as LISA and the DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory. We derive a conservative lower limit for the merger rate from this channel of 0.35 Gpc −3 yr −1 in the local universe and up to~9% of these events may have a detectable eccentricity at LVK design sensitivity. Additionally, we find that triple systems could play an important role in retaining second-generation BHs, which can later merge again in the core of the host cluster. Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Astrophysical black holes (98); Black holes (162); Stellar mass black holes (1611); Gravitational wave astronomy (675); Gravitational wave detectors (676); Gravitational wave sources (677); Gravitational waves (678); Globular star clusters (656); Star clusters (1567); Trinary stars (1714)

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Gravitational-wave Sources from Mergers of Binary Black Holes Catalyzed by Flyby Interactions in the Field

Cited by 47 publications

References 55 publications

One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways

One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways

Orbital evolution of binary black holes in active galactic nucleus disks: a disk channel for binary black hole mergers?

Black Hole Mergers from Hierarchical Triples in Dense Star Clusters

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