Probing the Spins of Supermassive Black Holes with Gravitational Waves from Surrounding Compact Binaries

Abstract

Merging compact black-hole (BH) binaries are likely to exist in the nuclear star clusters around supermassive BHs (SMBHs), such as Sgr A${}^{\ast }$. They may also form in the accretion disks of active galactic nuclei. Such compact binaries can emit gravitational waves (GWs) in the low-frequency band (0.001-1 Hz) that are detectable by several planned space-borne GW observatories. We show that the orbital axis of the compact binary may experience significant variation due to the frame-dragging effect associated with the spin of the SMBH. The dynamical behavior of the orbital axis can be understood analytically as a resonance phenomenon. We show that rate of change of the binary orbital axis encodes the information on the spin of the SMBH. Therefore detecting GWs from compact binaries around SMBHs, particularly the modulation of the waveform associated with the variation of the binary orbital axis, can provide a new probe on the spins of SMBHs.

Published in ApJ

References in corpus (14)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
• Gravitational waves from scattering of stellar-mass black holes in galactic nuclei
• An Update on Monitoring Stellar Orbits in the Galactic Center
• The Submillimeter Bump in Sgr A* from Relativistic MHD Simulations
• Suppression of extreme orbital evolution in triple systems with short range forces
• On the rate of black hole binary mergers in galactic nuclei due to dynamical hardening
• The Fate of Binaries in the Galactic Center: The Mundane and the Exotic
• S62 and S4711: Indications of a population of faint fast moving stars inside the S2 orbit -- S4711 on a 7.6 year orbit around Sgr~A*
• An upper limit on the spin of SgrA${}^{\ast }$ based on stellar orbits in its vicinity
• Binary dynamics near a massive black hole
• Detecting Supermassive Black Hole-Induced Binary Eccentricity Oscillations with LISA
• Steeper stellar cusps in galactic centers from binary disruption
• Detecting Kozai-Lidov imprints on the gravitational waves of intermediate-mass black holes in galactic nuclei
• Secular evolution of compact binaries revolving around a spinning massive black hole

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Gravitational Wave Astronomy With TianQin
• Quiescent and active galactic nuclei as factories of merging compact objects in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy
• Detecting gravitational lensing in hierarchical triples in galactic nuclei with space-borne gravitational-wave observatories
• Dynamics of Binary System around Supermassive Black Hole
• Evolution of Stellar Orbits Around Merging Massive Black-Hole Binary