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Do three-body encounters in galactic nuclei affect compact binary merger rates?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Alessandro A. Trani Open the ORCID record for Alessandro A. Trani [Opens in a new window]
Alessandro A. Trani*
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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High-density cusps of compact remnants are expected to form around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei via dynamical friction and two-body relaxation. Due to the high density, binaries in orbit around the SMBH can frequently undergo close encounters with compact remnants from the cusp. This can affect the gravitational wave merger rate of compact binaries in galactic nuclei. We investigated this process by means of high accuracy few-body simulations, performed with a novel Monte Carlo approach. We find that, around a SgrA*-like SMBH, three-body encounters increase the number of mergers by a factor of 3. This occurs because close encounters can reorient binaries with respect to their orbital plane around the SMBH, increasing the number of Kozai-Lidov induced mergers. We obtain a binary black hole merger rate of ГMW = 1.6 × 10−6 yr−1 per Milky Way-like nucleus.

Keywords

black hole physicsgravitational wavesmethods: numericalbinaries: generalgalaxies: nuclei
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 14 , Symposium S351: Star Clusters: From the Milky Way to the Early Universe , May 2019 , pp. 174 - 177
Copyright
© International Astronomical Union 2020

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