The Fate of Binaries in the Galactic Center: The Mundane and the Exotic

Abstract

The Galactic Center (GC) is dominated by the gravity of a super-massive black hole (SMBH), Sagittarius A${}^{\ast }$, and is suspected to contain a sizable population of binary stars. Such binaries form hierarchical triples with the SMBH, undergoing Eccentric Kozai-Lidov (EKL) evolution, which can lead to high eccentricity excitations for the binary companions' mutual orbit. This effect can lead to stellar collisions or Roche-lobe crossings, as well as orbital shrinking due to tidal dissipation. In this work we investigate the dynamical and stellar evolution of such binary systems, especially with regards to the binaries' post-main-sequence evolution. We find that the majority of binaries (~75%) is eventually separated into single stars, while the remaining binaries (~25%) undergo phases of common-envelope evolution and/or stellar mergers. These objects can produce a number of different exotic outcomes, including rejuvenated stars, G2-like infrared-excess objects, stripped giant stars, Type Ia supernovae (SNe), cataclysmic variables (CVs), symbiotic binaries (SBs), or compact object binaries. We estimate that, within a sphere of 250 Mpc radius, about 7.5 to 15 Type Ia SNe per year should occur in galactic nuclei due to this mechanism, potentially detectable by ZTF and ASAS-SN. Likewise we estimate that, within a sphere of 1 Gpc${}^3$ volume, about 10 to 20 compact object binaries form per year that could become gravitational wave sources. Based on results of EKL-driven compact object binary mergers in galactic nuclei by Hoang at al. (2018), this compact object binary formation rate translates to about 15 to 30 events per year detectable by Advanced LIGO.

8 pages, 3 figures, accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (17)

• The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results
• Testing General Relativity with stellar orbits around the supermassive black hole in our Galactic center
• Mergers and Obliquities in Stellar Triples
• A Catalog of X-ray Point Sources from Two Megaseconds of Chandra Observations of the Galactic Center
• Detection of Galactic Center source G2 at 3.8 $\mu$m during periapse passage
• Interacting Binaries with Eccentric Orbits. Secular Orbital Evolution Due To Conservative Mass Transfer
• Mass transfer in white dwarf-neutron star binaries
• A Chandra Catalog of X-ray Sources in the Central 150 pc of the Galaxy
• Secular Evolution Of Binaries Near Massive Black Holes: Formation of compact binaries, merger/collision products and G2-like objects
• Planetary engulfment as a trigger for white dwarf pollution
• Populating the Galaxy with pulsars I: stellar & binary evolution
• Binary dynamics near a massive black hole
• Detecting Supermassive Black Hole-Induced Binary Eccentricity Oscillations with LISA
• Hypervelocity Collisions of Binary Stars at the Galactic Centre
• Origin of the early-type R stars: a binary-merger solution to a century-old problem?
• White-dwarf red-giant mergers, early-type R stars, J stars and lithium
• The Post-Periapse Evolution of Galactic Center Source G1: The second case of a resolved tidal interaction with a supermassive black hole

Cited by in corpus (60)

• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• Rates of Compact Object Coalescences
• Impact of Massive Binary Star and Cosmic Evolution on Gravitational Wave Observations I: Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers
• Exploring the Lower Mass Gap and Unequal Mass Regime in Compact Binary Evolution
• Kilonova Luminosity Function Constraints based on Zwicky Transient Facility Searches for 13 Neutron Star Mergers
• Stellar transits across a magnetized accretion torus as a mechanism for plasmoid ejection
• Black Hole Mergers from Hierarchical Triples in Dense Star Clusters
• A population of dust-enshrouded objects orbiting the Galactic black hole
• Stellar triples on the edge; Comprehensive overview of the evolution of destabilised triples leading to stellar and binary exotica
• Modelling Neutron Star-Black Hole Binaries: Future Pulsar Surveys and Gravitational Wave Detectors
• The Formation of Intermediate Mass Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei
• Birth, life, and death of black hole binaries around supermassive black holes: dynamical evolution of gravitational wave sources
• Multiple Stellar Evolution: a population synthesis algorithm to model the stellar, binary, and dynamical evolution of multiple-star systems
• Gravitational Wave Astronomy With TianQin
• Distinguishing Tidal Disruption Events from Impostors
• Long-term Evolution of Tightly-Packed Stellar Black Holes in AGN Disks: Formation of Merging Black-Hole Binaries via Close Encounters
• Quiescent and active galactic nuclei as factories of merging compact objects in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy
• Gravitational-Wave Signatures from Compact Object Binaries in the Galactic Center
• Detecting Accelerating Eccentric Binaries in the LISA Band
• Neutron Star-Black Hole Mergers from Gravitational Wave Captures
• On Socially Distant Neighbors: Using Binaries to Constrain the Density of Objects in the Galactic Center
• Evolution of massive stellar triples and implications for compact object binary formation
• A statistical view on stable and unstable Roche lobe overflow of a tertiary star onto the inner binary in triple systems
• Ready-to-use analytic model for gravitational waves from a hierarchical triple with Kozai-Lidov oscillations
• Search for gravitational-wave bursts in the third Advanced LIGO-Virgo run with coherent WaveBurst enhanced by Machine Learning
• Properties of von Zeipel-Lidov-Kozai oscillations in triple systems at the quadrupole order: relaxing the test particle approximation
• Massive binary star mergers in galactic nuclei: implications for blue stragglers, binary S-stars and gravitational waves
• An absence of binary companions to Wolf-Rayet stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud: implications for mass loss and black hole masses at low metallicity
• Demographics of triple systems in dense star clusters
• Companion-driven evolution of massive stellar binaries
• Planet Hunters TESS IV: A massive, compact hierarchical triple star system TIC 470710327
• On the Mass Ratio Distribution of Black Hole Mergers in Triple Systems
• Observational Constraints on the Common Envelope Phase
• Evidence of a Decreased Binary Fraction for Massive Stars Within 20 Milliparsecs of the Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center
• Applying the metallicity-dependent binary fraction to double white dwarf formation: Implications for LISA
• A binary system in the S cluster close to the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*
• The apparent tail of the Galactic center object G2/DSO
• Degeneracy between mass and peculiar acceleration for the double white dwarfs in the LISA band
• Ultra wide black-hole - neutron star binaries as a possible source for gravitational waves and short gamma ray bursts
• The Swansong of the Galactic Center Source X7: An Extreme Example of Tidal Evolution near the Supermassive Black Hole
• The evolution of circumstellar discs in the Galactic Centre: an application to the G-clouds
• Probing the Spins of Supermassive Black Holes with Gravitational Waves from Surrounding Compact Binaries
• Heavy-tailed likelihoods for robustness against data outliers: Applications to the analysis of gravitational wave data
• Detecting gravitational-wave bursts from black hole binaries in the Galactic Center with LISA
• Dynamics of Binary System around Supermassive Black Hole
• Binary Natal Kicks in the Galactic Center: X-ray Binaries, Hypervelocity Stars, and Gravitational Waves
• Neutron Stars in the Effective Fly-By Framework: $f$-Mode Re-summation
• The Evaporating Massive Embedded Stellar Cluster IRS 13 Close to Sgr A*. II. Kinematic structure
• $G$ Objects and primordial black holes
• Binary mergers in the centers of galaxies: synergy between stellar flybys and tidal fields
• Astrophysics with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• S0-2 star, G1- and G2-objects and flaring activity of the Milky Way's Galactic Center black hole in 2019
• Candidate Young Stellar Objects in the S-cluster: The Kinematic Analysis of a Sub-population of the Low-mass G-objects close to Sgr A*
• Imprints of massive black-hole binaries on neighbouring decihertz gravitational-wave sources
• The Supersonic Project: SIGOs, a Proposed Progenitor to Globular Clusters, and their Connections to Gravitational Wave Anisotropies
• The hierarchical three-body problem at $\mathcal{O}(G^2)$
• Challenges in Forming Millisecond Pulsar-Black Holes from Isolated Binaries
• Kozai-driven mass loss of the circumbinary disk in D9 in orbit around the supermassive black hole Sgr A*
• Black Hole Survival Guide: Searching for Stars in the Galactic Center That Endure Partial Tidal Disruption
• Tidal disruptions of close white dwarf binaries by intermediate mass black holes