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Long Term Evolution of Massive Black Hole Binaries

4 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

4 Pith papers citing it
abstract

The long-term evolution of massive black hole binaries at the centers of galaxies is studied in a variety of physical regimes, with the aim of resolving the ``final parsec problem,'' i.e., how black hole binaries manage to shrink to separations at which emission of gravity waves becomes efficient. A binary ejects stars by the gravitational slingshot and carves out a loss cone in the host galaxy. Continued decay of the binary requires a refilling of the loss cone. We show that the standard treatment of loss cone refilling, derived for collisionally relaxed systems like globular clusters, can substantially underestimate the refilling rates in galactic nuclei. We derive expressions for non-equilibrium loss-cone dynamics and calculate time scales for the decay of massive black hole binaries following galaxy mergers, obtaining significantly higher decay rates than heretofore. Even in the absence of two-body relaxation, decay of binaries can persist due to repeated ejection of stars returning to the nucleus on eccentric orbits. We show that this recycling of stars leads to a gradual, approximately logarithmic dependence of the binary binding energy on time. We derive an expression for the loss cone refilling induced by the Brownian motion of a black hole binary. We also show that numerical N-body experiments are not well suited to probe these mechanisms over long times due to spurious relaxation.

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UNVERDICTED 4

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representative citing papers

Self-acceleration of Hardening Binaries

astro-ph.GA · 2026-05-01 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0

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.

citing papers explorer

Showing 4 of 4 citing papers.

  • Self-acceleration of Hardening Binaries astro-ph.GA · 2026-05-01 · unverdicted · none · ref 38

    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.

  • Probing Supermassive Black Hole Mergers with Pulsar Timing Arrays astro-ph.HE · 2026-04-22 · unverdicted · none · ref 11

    Pulsar timing arrays can probe supermassive black hole binaries that merged prior to observations via the pulsar term, with SKA potentially detecting a few such zombie binaries at SNR > 3.

  • Expectations for the first supermassive black-hole binary resolved by PTAs I: Model efficacy astro-ph.IM · 2025-10-01 · unverdicted · none · ref 9 · internal anchor

    Simulations of PTA data show that a full gravitational-wave signal template achieves the highest Bayes factors and most robust parameter estimation for individual supermassive black hole binaries compared to an Earth-term template and a novel Spike Pixel cross-correlation model.

  • Waveform Modelling for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna gr-qc · 2023-11-02 · unverdicted · none · ref 37 · internal anchor

    A review of existing waveform models for LISA sources and the challenges that must still be overcome.