A new gravitational wave event reveals a binary black hole merger with total mass 190-265 solar masses, indicating black holes can form via gravitational-wave driven mergers beyond standard stellar channels.
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Rapid and Bright Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei
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abstract
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO, found direct evidence for double black hole binaries emitting gravitational waves. Galactic nuclei are expected to harbor the densest population of stellar-mass black holes. A significant fraction ($\sim30\%$) of these black holes can reside in binaries. We examine the fate of the black hole binaries in active galactic nuclei, which get trapped in the inner region of the accretion disk around the central supermassive black hole. We show that binary black holes can migrate into and then rapidly merge within the disk well within a Salpeter time. The binaries may also accrete a significant amount of gas from the disk, well above the Eddington rate. This could lead to detectable X-ray or gamma-ray emission, but would require hyper-Eddington accretion with a few percent radiative efficiency, comparable to thin disks. We discuss implications for gravitational wave observations and black hole population studies. We estimate that Advanced LIGO may detect $\sim20$ such, gas-induced binary mergers per year.
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representative citing papers
Hardening binaries experience deterministic self-acceleration of their center of mass, induced precession, and plane rotation in uniform isotropic media, driving outward spiraling and eccentricity growth in all cases rather than circularization.
Numerical relativity simulations of triple black hole systems reveal redshift effects and gravitational lensing in ringdown signals from head-on mergers, with no additional black hole formation from amplified waves.
AGN disk capture and merger rates scale as (H/R)^{-8} and drop by 10-20 orders of magnitude in thick magnetically supported disks compared to thin thermal disks.
Semi-analytic waveform model for scalar environments around black hole binaries is validated against numerical relativity and applied to LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data to obtain upper limits on scalar densities with tentative evidence in GW190728.
GW231123's masses and high spins are consistent with primordial black holes that accreted mass and angular momentum in the early universe within the standard PBH framework.
Bayesian inference on LVK O1-O3 events with eccentric aligned-spin waveforms yields log10 Bayes factors of 1.77-4.75 favoring eccentricity for GW200129, GW190701 and GW200208_22, and >99.5% probability that at least one of 57 events is eccentric under an astrophysically motivated rate prior.
High initial eccentricities in stellar-mass black hole binaries produce a stochastic gravitational wave background distinguishable by LISA from quasi-circular models, enabling upper bounds on eccentricity and separation of environmental effects for dense gas.
GWTC-2.1 adds eight new high-significance compact binary coalescence events to the prior catalog, extending the observed black hole mass range and including candidates inside the pair-instability mass gap.
Baselines of 8-11 ms light travel time for two CE detectors provide a reasonable compromise for BBH sky localization, with third detectors eliminating multimodality for most or all events.
citing papers explorer
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GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190-265 $M_{\odot}$
A new gravitational wave event reveals a binary black hole merger with total mass 190-265 solar masses, indicating black holes can form via gravitational-wave driven mergers beyond standard stellar channels.
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Self-acceleration of Hardening Binaries
Hardening binaries experience deterministic self-acceleration of their center of mass, induced precession, and plane rotation in uniform isotropic media, driving outward spiraling and eccentricity growth in all cases rather than circularization.
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The third wheel: ringdown and lensing of triple systems
Numerical relativity simulations of triple black hole systems reveal redshift effects and gravitational lensing in ringdown signals from head-on mergers, with no additional black hole formation from amplified waves.
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Thick Disks, Thin Hopes: Suppressed Capture and Merger Rates in AGN
AGN disk capture and merger rates scale as (H/R)^{-8} and drop by 10-20 orders of magnitude in thick magnetically supported disks compared to thin thermal disks.
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Scalar fields around black hole binaries in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
Semi-analytic waveform model for scalar environments around black hole binaries is validated against numerical relativity and applied to LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data to obtain upper limits on scalar densities with tentative evidence in GW190728.
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GW231123: A Possible Primordial Black Hole Origin
GW231123's masses and high spins are consistent with primordial black holes that accreted mass and angular momentum in the early universe within the standard PBH framework.
-
Evidence for eccentricity in the population of binary black holes observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
Bayesian inference on LVK O1-O3 events with eccentric aligned-spin waveforms yields log10 Bayes factors of 1.77-4.75 favoring eccentricity for GW200129, GW190701 and GW200208_22, and >99.5% probability that at least one of 57 events is eccentric under an astrophysically motivated rate prior.
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Implications of the LISA stochastic signal from eccentric stellar mass black hole binaries in vacuum
High initial eccentricities in stellar-mass black hole binaries produce a stochastic gravitational wave background distinguishable by LISA from quasi-circular models, enabling upper bounds on eccentricity and separation of environmental effects for dense gas.
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GWTC-2.1: Deep Extended Catalog of Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
GWTC-2.1 adds eight new high-significance compact binary coalescence events to the prior catalog, extending the observed black hole mass range and including candidates inside the pair-instability mass gap.
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Not too close! Evaluating the impact of the baseline on the localization of binary black holes by next-generation gravitational-wave detectors
Baselines of 8-11 ms light travel time for two CE detectors provide a reasonable compromise for BBH sky localization, with third detectors eliminating multimodality for most or all events.