SMBH accretion & mergers: removing the symmetries

Abstract

We review recent progress in studying accretion flows on to supermassive black holes (SMBH). Much of this removes earlier assumptions of symmetry and regularity, such as aligned and prograde disc rotation. This allows a much richer variety of effects, often because cancellation of angular momentum allows rapid infall. Potential applications include lower SMBH spins allowing faster mass growth and suppressing gravitational-wave reaction recoil in mergers, gas-assisted SMBH mergers, and near-dynamical accretion in galaxy centres.

12 pages, 3 figures. Invited article for the focus issue on astrophysical black holes in Classical and Quantum Gravity, guest editors: D. Merritt and L. Rezzolla

References in corpus (6)

• Accretion disc viscosity: how big is alpha?
• Starbursts near supermassive black holes: young stars in the Galactic Center, and gravitational waves in LISA band
• The Evolution of Black Hole Mass and Spin in Active Galactic Nuclei
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• Supermassive Black Hole Binaries: The Search Continues
• Warp propagation in astrophysical discs
• Ringed accretion disks: evolution of double toroidal configurations
• General relativistic rotational energy extraction from black holes-accretion disk systems
• Black holes in stellar-mass binary systems: expiating original spin?