Examining the effects of dark matter spikes on eccentric intermediate mass ratio inspirals using N-body simulations

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that dark matter (DM) spikes around intermediate-mass black holes could cause observable dephasing in gravitational wave (GW) signals from Intermediate Mass Ratio Inspirals (IMRIs). Previous research primarily used non-self-consistent analytic methods to estimate the impact of DM spikes on eccentric IMRIs. Our study provides the first self-consistent treatment of this phenomenon using $N$-body simulations, incorporating Post-Newtonian effects up to the 2.5 order for accurate and robust results. Contrary to prior works, which posited that the cumulative effect of two-body encounters (dynamical friction; DF) is the primary mechanism for energy dissipation, we reveal that a three-body effect (slingshot mechanism) plays a more significant role in driving the binary system's energy loss and consequent orbital shrinkage. We find that binaries counter-rotating with respect to the DM spike merge faster, while co-rotating binaries merge slower, contrary to expectations from the DF theory. Using Fokker-Planck methods, we also assess the presence and detectability of spikes in realistic environments. When interacting with surrounding materials, DM spikes can have shallower slopes and lower densities than previously considered, leading to smaller signals and lower detection prospects via dephasing. Our results suggest that `deshifting' rather than dephasing might be a more optimistic signature, as it is more robust even in low-density environments.

arXiv comment21 pages, 20 figures. Accepted in MNRAS. The code used for simulations is available here: https://github.com/dipto4/falcon_dm

References in corpus (88)

• The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• The cosmological simulation code GADGET-2
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• GW170814: A Three-Detector Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• TianQin: a space-borne gravitational wave detector
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• Comprehensive analytic formulae for stellar evolution as a function of mass and metallicity
• GW190425: Observation of a Compact Binary Coalescence with Total Mass $\sim 3.4M_{\odot }$
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
• The M-sigma and M-L Relations in Galactic Bulges and Determinations of their Intrinsic Scatter
• REBOUND: An open-source multi-purpose N-body code for collisional dynamics
• Dark matter annihilation at the galactic center
• IAS15: A fast, adaptive, high-order integrator for gravitational dynamics, accurate to machine precision over a billion orbits
• Science with the space-based interferometer LISA. V: Extreme mass-ratio inspirals
• AGAMA: Action-based galaxy modelling architecture
• The dynamical evolution of massive black hole binaries - I. Hardening in a fixed stellar background
• A Review of Bondi--Hoyle--Lyttleton Accretion
• The initial mass function : from Salpeter 1955 to 2005
• A Dark-Matter Spike at the Galactic Center?
• Limits to dark matter annihilation cross-section from a combined analysis of MAGIC and Fermi-LAT observations of dwarf satellite galaxies
• A Hierarchical O(N) Force Calculation Algorithm
• Science with e-ASTROGAM (A space mission for MeV-GeV gamma-ray astrophysics)
• Multi-physics simulations using a hierarchical interchangeable software interface
• Interaction of massive black hole binaries with their stellar environment: I. Ejection of hypervelocity stars
• Into the lair: gravitational-wave signatures of dark matter
• Matter-wave Atomic Gradiometer Interferometric Sensor (MAGIS-100)
• Dark Matter Spikes and Annihilation Radiation from the Galactic Center
• Detecting dark matter around black holes with gravitational waves: Effects of dark-matter dynamics on the gravitational waveform
• Time-Dependent Models for Dark Matter at the Galactic Center
• A New Signature of Dark Matter Annihilations: Gamma-Rays from Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
• The Local Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Landscape From Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
• Evolution of the Dark Matter Distribution at the Galactic Center
• A new probe of dark matter properties: gravitational waves from an intermediate mass black hole embedded in a dark matter mini-spike
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Bayesian Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
• Gravitational waves as a probe of dark matter mini-spikes
• Nearby Early-Type Galactic Nuclei at High Resolution: Dynamical Black Hole and Nuclear Star Cluster Mass Measurements
• Single Sources in the Low-Frequency Gravitational Wave Sky: properties and time to detection by pulsar timing arrays
• Disks, spikes, and clouds: distinguishing environmental effects on BBH gravitational waveforms
• Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess from Dark Matter Annihilation: Is There A Black Hole Spike?
• Measuring the dark matter environments of black hole binaries with gravitational waves
• Dark matter spikes in the vicinity of Kerr black holes
• Improved Dynamical Constraints on the Mass of the central Black Hole in NGC 404
• Long-Term Evolution of Massive Black Hole Binaries. III. Binary Evolution in Collisional Nuclei
• Sharp Signals of Boson Clouds in Black Hole Binary Inspirals
• On incorporating post-Newtonian effects in N-body dynamics
• Dynamical constraints on a dark matter spike at the Galactic Centre from stellar orbits
• Mini-dark halos with intermediate mass black holes
• Post-Newtonian evolution of massive black hole triplets in galactic nuclei -- II. Survey of the parameter space
• Galaxy Rotation and Rapid Supermassive Black Hole Binary Coalescence
• Extreme Dark Matter Tests with Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals
• Eccentricity evolution of compact binaries and applications to gravitational-wave physics
• Massive black hole binary eccentricity in rotating stellar systems
• N-body Integrators with Individual Time Steps from Hierarchical Splitting
• Collisionally Regenerated Dark Matter Structures in Galactic Nuclei
• A new Fokker-Planck approach for relaxation-driven evolution of galactic nuclei
• Explaining the Orbits of the Galactic Center S-Stars
• Gravitational waves with dark matter minispikes: the combined effect
• Dark matter annihilation near a black hole: plateau vs. weak cusp
• Circularization vs. Eccentrification in Intermediate Mass Ratio Inspirals inside Dark Matter Spikes
• Weak annihilation cusp inside the dark matter spike about a black hole
• In-depth analysis of the clustering of dark matter particles around primordial black holes I: density profiles
• Dark matter: an efficient catalyst for intermediate-mass-ratio-inspiral events
• Eccentric evolution of SMBH binaries
• Measuring dark matter spikes around primordial black holes with Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer
• Priorities in gravitational waveforms for future space-borne detectors: vacuum accuracy or environment?
• Accretion of Dark Matter onto a Moving Schwarzschild Black Hole: An Exact Solution
• A black hole window into p-wave dark matter annihilation
• Comparing Accretion Disks and Dark Matter Spikes in Intermediate Mass Ratio Inspirals
• A Time-Symmetric Block Time-Step Algorithm for N-Body Simulations
• The Link Between Ejected Stars, Hardening and Eccentricity Growth of Super Massive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei
• Intermediate Mass-Ratio Inspirals with Dark Matter Minispikes
• Archival searches for stellar-mass binary black holes in LISA
• Resolving the Complex Evolution of a Supermassive Black Hole Triplet in a Cosmological Simulation
• Chaos in self-gravitating many-body systems: Lyapunov time dependence of $N$ and the influence of general relativity
• Inward Bound: The incredible journey of massive black holes as they pair and merge; I. The effect of mass ratio in flattened rotating galactic nuclei
• Evolution Of Binary Supermassive Black Holes In Rotating Nuclei
• Extremely efficient mergers of intermediate mass black hole binaries in nucleated dwarf galaxies
• A New Discrete Dynamical Friction Estimator Based on $N$-body Simulations
• SpaceHub: A high-performance gravity integration toolkit for few-body problems in astrophysics
• Fast Multipole Methods for $N$-body Simulations of Collisional Star Systems
• Dynamics of supermassive black hole triples in the ROMULUS25 cosmological simulation
• Successive Merger of Multiple Massive Black Holes in a Primordial Galaxy
• Stellar hardening of massive black hole binaries: the impact of the host rotation
• Evolution of Massive Black Hole Binaries in Collisionally Relaxed Nuclear Star Clusters -- Impact of Mass Segregation
• Intermediate-mass ratio inspirals in merging elliptical galaxies
• Dynamical friction in dark matter spikes: corrections to Chandrasekhar's formula
• Dancing above the abyss: Environmental effects and dark matter signatures in inspirals into massive black holes

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Sharpening the dark matter signature in gravitational waveforms II: Numerical simulations with the NbodyIMRI code
• Dynamical friction from self-interacting dark matter
• Probing dark matter halo profiles with multi-band observations of gravitational waves
• Intermediate mass ratio inspirals in dark matter halos
• Mass and spin coevolution of black holes inspiralling through dark matter
• Hints of Dark Matter Spikes in Low-mass X-ray Binaries: a critical assessment
• Accretion of self-interacting dark matter onto supermassive black holes