Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Galaxy Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2011-10-27
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Galaxy Astrophysics
10 pages, 6 figures
Scientific paper
We study the formation of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary and the shrinking of the separation of the two holes to sub-pc scales starting from a realistic major merger between two gas-rich spiral galaxies with mass comparable to our Milky Way. The simulations are the first of this kind carried out with an Adaptive Mesh refinement (AMR) code (here RAMSES), and the first capable to resolve separations as small as 0.1 pc. The collision of the two galaxies produces a gravo-turbulent rotating nuclear disk with mass (\sim 10^9 Msun) and size (\sim 60 pc) in excellent agreement with previous SPH simulations with particle splitting that used a similar setup (Mayer et al. 2007) but were limited to separations of a few parsecs. The AMR results confirm that the two black holes sink rapidly as a result of dynamical friction onto the gaseous background, reaching a separation of 1 pc in less than 10^7 yr. We show that the dynamical friction wake is well resolved by our model and we find good agreement with analytical predictions of the drag force as a function of the Mach number. Below 1 pc, black hole pairing slows down significantly, as the relative velocity between the sinking SMBH becomes highly subsonic and the mass contained within their orbit falls below the mass of the binary itself, rendering dynamical friction ineffective. Non-axisymmetric gas torques do not arise to restart sinking in absence of efficient dynamical friction, at variance with previous calculations using idealized equilibrium nuclear disk models. We believe that the rather "hot" EOS we used to model the multiphase turbulent ISM in the nuclear region is playing an important role in preventing efficient SMBH sinking inside the central parsec. We conclude with a discussion of the way forward to address sinking in gaseous backgrounds at sub-pc scales approaching the gravitational wave regime.
Chapon Damien
Mayer Lucio
Teyssier Romain
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