Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21344905b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #449.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.341
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
1
Scientific paper
When two super-massive black holes merge, a significant fraction of their total initial mass-energy is lost in gravitational waves. From the point of view of a circumbinary gaseous disk, much of this mass loss is effectively instantaneous, occurring on less than an orbital period. In a collisionless disk, we show that this leads to the immediate excitation of substantial epicyclic motion, and subsequent orbit-crossing. In a gaseous disk, it leads to the excitation of acoustic waves and shock fronts, and consequent characteristic electromagnetic variability of the circumbinary disk around the newly merged black hole. In the context of disks around super-massive black hole binary mergers observable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), we discuss the observability of the induced variations in the disk properties. It is shown that these signals can be used to provide unique insights into circumbinary disks -e.g. maps of temperature, disk thickness, and thermal timescale versus radius. Moreover, we consider several cases when these shocks will provide the first detectable electromagnetic counterpart to the gravitational wave signal, allowing for quick determination of the host galaxy, it's redshift and, ultimately, an absolute, gravitationally calibrated measurement of the DL-z relation.
Bode Nathaniel J.
Phinney E.
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