Interaction of massive black hole binaries with their stellar environment: II. Loss-cone depletion and binary orbital decay

Details Interaction of massive black hole binaries with their stellar environment: II. Loss-cone depletion and binary orbital decay Interaction of massive black hole binaries with their stellar environment: II. Loss-cone depletion and binary orbital decay

2006-12-11

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0612265v3

Astrophys.J.660:546-555,2007

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Minor revision. 10 pages, 7 figures, ApJ in press

Scientific paper

10.1086/513016

We study the long-term evolution of massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) at the centers of galaxies using detailed scattering experiments to solve the full three-body problem. Ambient stars drawn from a isotropic Maxwellian distribution unbound to the binary are ejected by the gravitational slingshot. We construct a minimal, hybrid model for the depletion of the loss cone and the orbital decay of the binary, and show that secondary slingshots - stars returning on small impact parameter orbits to have a second super-elastic scattering with the MBHB - may considerably help the shrinking of the pair in the case of large binary mass ratios. In the absence of loss-cone refilling by two-body relaxation or other processes, the mass ejected before the stalling of a MBHB is half the binary reduced mass. About 50% of the ejected stars are expelled ejected in a "burst" lasting ~1E4 yrs M_6^1/4, where M_6 is the binary mass in units of 1E6 Msun. The loss cone is completely emptied in a few bulge crossing timescales, 1E7 yrs M_6^1/4. Even in the absence of two-body relaxation or gas dynamical processes, unequal mass and/or eccentric binaries with M_6 >0.1 can shrink to the gravitational wave emission regime in less than a Hubble time, and are therefore "safe" targets for the planned Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

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