Misaligned accretion on to supermassive black hole binaries

Abstract

We present the results of high-resolution numerical simulations of gas clouds falling onto binary supermassive black holes to form circumbinary accretion discs, with both prograde and retrograde cloud orbits. We explore a range of clouds masses and cooling rates. We find that for low mass discs that cool fast enough to fragment, prograde discs are significantly shorter-lived than similar discs orbiting retrograde with respect to the binary. For fragmenting discs of all masses, we also find that prograde discs fragment across a narrower radial region. If the cooling is slow enough that the disc enters a self-regulating gravitoturbulent regime, we find that alignment between the disc and binary planes occurs on a timescale primarily dictated by the disc thickness. We estimate realistic cooling times for such discs, and find that in the majority of cases we expect fragmentation to occur. The longer lifetime of low-mass fragmenting retrograde discs allows them to drive significant binary evolution, and may provide a mechanism for solving the 'last parsec problem'.

arXiv comment13 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Simulation movies can be found at: http://www.acdunhill.com/binary-smbhs

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