Accretion Disk Reactions to Abrupt Central Mass Loss as a Potential Electromagnetic Signature of Binary Black Hole Mergers

Details Accretion Disk Reactions to Abrupt Central Mass Loss as a Potential Electromagnetic Signature of Binary Black Hole Mergers Accretion Disk Reactions to Abrupt Central Mass Loss as a Potential Electromagnetic Signature of Binary Black Hole Mergers

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21548203o&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #482.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.573

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We report on analytic and numerical analyses of the reaction of accretion disks to binary black hole mergers. Specifically, we are interested in the response of shared circumbinary disks to the effectively instantaneous reduction of central mass resulting from the prompt emission of gravitational waves in the final phases of black hole merger. The detection of a merger in both electromagnetic and gravitational waves would facilitate tests of general relativity and could be used as a powerful cosmological probe when combined with the identification of a host galaxy. Additionally, the identification of an electromagnetic merger signal could tell us much about accretion physics in dynamical spacetimes.
Following a suggestion made by Bode & Phinney, we develop a series of analytic expectations for the post-merger production of shocks in circumbinary disks. Using simulations of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic thin disks, we confirm that the expected shocks occur when the fractional mass loss exceeds the disk half-thickness. Applying proxies for the electromagnetic emission, however, we find that these shocks are insufficient to produce a global post-merger increase in luminosity. In fact, the most promising electromagnetic indicator of a binary black hole merger may be the decrease in emission caused by the retreat of the inner disk from the post-merger central object. Such a scenario would be most likely to occur in high Eddington ratio (thick) disks that follow their central black holes in nearly to the point of binary merger. Realistically, the detection of this drop-out signal would require identification of the binary candidate in advance using, for example, the angular localization of a gravitational wave detector like LISA in conjunction with sensitive radio or X-ray instruments.
This work was supported by NSF grant AST 06-07428, NASA ATFP grant NNX08AH29G, the UMCP Astronomy CTC Prize Fellowship Program, and the Chandra Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

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