Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence

Details Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence

2007-03-05

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0703054v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

referee's comments included, to appear in ApJL

Scientific paper

10.1086/518769

Recent numerical relativistic simulations of black hole coalescence suggest that in certain alignments the emission of gravitational radiation can produce a kick of several thousand kilometers per second. This exceeds galactic escape speeds, hence unless there a mechanism to prevent this, one would expect many galaxies that had merged to be without a central black hole. Here we show that in most galactic mergers, torques from accreting gas suffice to align the orbit and spins of both black holes with the large-scale gas flow. Such a configuration has a maximum kick speed <200 km/s, safely below galactic escape speeds. We predict, however, that in mergers of galaxies without much gas, the remnant will be kicked out several percent of the time. We also discuss other predictions of our scenario, including implications for jet alignment angles and X-type radio sources.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-113295