McFacts III: Compact binary mergers from AGN disks over an entire synthetic universe

Abstract

The Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) channel for the formation of binary black hole (BBH) mergers has been previously studied as a potential formation channel for the merging compact binaries observed by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) scientific collaboration. The first two papers in this series explored the McFACTS code for the evolution of black hole orbits in AGN accretion disks for individual galaxy models and described the characteristics of predicted BBH populations in realizations of those models (such as the correlation between mass ratio and aligned spin). In this work, we explore the impact of the properties of AGN host galaxies and assume an AGN lifetime and cosmological model for the density of AGN in a universe like our own. By sampling from an inferred population of AGN, we marginalize over galaxy mass to predict a population of BBH mergers observable by modern ground-based gravitational wave observatories. We find that for reasonable assumptions, AGN disk environments may account for massive BBH mergers such as GW190521 and GW190929_012149. We find that the majority of observable BBH mergers from our simulation are expected to originate in galaxies with a super-massive black hole between $10^7{M}_{\odot }$ and $10^{9.4}{M}_{\odot }$. We also find that if hierarchical mergers from AGN disks account for a substantial part of the LVK population, our current models require an AGN lifetime of 0.5 to 2.5 Myr.

Accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (39)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
• Toward the Standard Population Synthesis Model of the X-Ray Background: Evolution of X-Ray Luminosity and Absorption Functions of Active Galactic Nuclei Including Compton-Thick Populations
• Strangulation as the primary mechanism for shutting down star formation in galaxies
• Double Compact Objects III: Gravitational Wave Detection Rates
• The Galaxy Mass Function up to z=4 in the GOODS-MUSIC sample: into the epoch of formation of massive galaxies
• Nuclear Star Clusters
• Illuminating Black Hole Binary Formation Channels with Spins in Advanced LIGO
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
• GW190521: orbital eccentricity and signatures of dynamical formation in a binary black hole merger signal
• The Dynamical Evolution of Stellar Black Holes in Globular Clusters
• AGN as Potential Factories for Eccentric Black Hole Mergers
• Intermediate mass black holes in AGN disks II. Model predictions & observational constraints
• The final mass and spin of black hole mergers
• The impact of mass-transfer physics on the observable properties of field binary black hole populations
• POSYDON: A General-Purpose Population Synthesis Code with Detailed Binary-Evolution Simulations
• GW190521 as a dynamical capture of two nonspinning black holes
• Binary black holes in young star clusters: the impact of metallicity
• Exploring the Lower Mass Gap and Unequal Mass Regime in Compact Binary Evolution
• Spin Evolution of Stellar-mass Black Hole Binaries in Active Galactic Nuclei
• On the Origin of GW190521-like events from repeated black hole mergers in star clusters
• Orbital Migration of Interacting Stellar Mass Black Holes in Disks around Supermassive Black Holes II. Spins and Incoming Objects
• Binary Black Hole Merger Rates in AGN Disks versus Nuclear Star Clusters: Loud beats Quiet
• Resolving the Stellar-Collapse and Hierarchical-Merger origins of the Coalescing Black Holes
• The Origin of inequality: isolated formation of a 30+10Msun binary black-hole merger
• LIGO--Virgo correlations between mass ratio and effective inspiral spin: testing the active galactic nuclei channel
• Quiescent and active galactic nuclei as factories of merging compact objects in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy
• Potential Subpopulations and Assembling Tendency of the Merging Black Holes
• What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: Use and Abuse of Astrophysical Models in Gravitational-wave Population Analyses
• Gas Assisted Binary Black Hole Formation in AGN Discs
• pAGN: the one-stop solution for AGN disc modeling
• Measuring the properties of active galactic nuclei disks with gravitational waves
• Black-hole mergers in disklike environments could explain the observed $q$-${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}$ correlation
• Unequal-mass, highly-spinning binary black hole mergers in the stable mass transfer formation channel
• Constraints on the contributions to the observed binary black hole population from individual evolutionary pathways in isolated binary evolution
• Backward Population Synthesis: Mapping the Evolutionary History of Gravitational-Wave Progenitors
• Exploring field-evolution and dynamical-capture coalescing binary black holes in GWTC-3

Cited by in corpus (7)

• 3D Adiabatic Simulations of Binary Black Hole Formation in AGN
• Hydrodynamic simulations of black hole evolution in AGN discs I: orbital alignment of highly inclined satellites
• McFACTS II: Mass Ratio--Effective Spin Relationship of Black Hole Mergers in the AGN Channel
• Black Hole Merger Rates in AGN: contribution from gas-captured binaries
• Reassessing the Spin of Second-born Black Holes in Coalescing Binary Black Holes and Its Connection to the chi_eff-q Correlation
• Population Synthesis of Gravitational Wave Sources
• The role of migration traps in the formation of binary black holes in AGN disks