Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Scientific paper
2011-05-18
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
5 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters
Scientific paper
Supermassive black holes presumably grow through numerous mergers throughout cosmic time. During each merger, supermassive black hole binaries are surrounded by a circumbinary accretion disk that imposes a significant (~1e4 G for a binary of 1e8 Msun) magnetic field. The motion of the binary through that field will convert the field energy to Poynting flux, with a luminosity ~1e43 erg/s (B/1e4 G)^2 (M/1e8 Msun)^2, some of which may emerge as synchrotron emission at frequencies near 1 GHz where current and planned wide-field radio surveys will operate. We find that the short timescales of many mergers will limit their detectability with most planned blind surveys to <1 per year over the whole sky, independent of the details of the emission process and flux distribution. Including an optimistic estimate for the radio flux makes detection even less likely, with <1 mergers per year over the whole sky. However, wide-field radio instruments may be able to localize systems identified in advance of merger by gravitational waves. Further, radio surveys may be able to detect the weaker emission produced by the binary's motion as it is modulated by spin-orbit precession and inspiral well in advance of merger.
Kaplan David L.
O'Shaughnessy Richard
Sesana Alberto
Volonteri Marta
No associations
LandOfFree
Blindly Detecting Merging Supermassive Black Holes with Radio Surveys 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 Blindly Detecting Merging Supermassive Black Holes with Radio Surveys, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Blindly Detecting Merging Supermassive Black Holes with Radio Surveys will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-54255