Wandering and escaping: recoiling massive black holes in cosmological simulations

Abstract

After a merger of two massive black holes (MBHs), the remnant receives a gravitational wave (GW) recoil kick that can have a strong effect on its future evolution. The magnitude of the kick ($v_{\mathrm{recoil}}$) depends on the mass ratio and the alignment of the spins and orbital angular momenta, therefore on the previous evolution of the MBHs. We investigate the cosmic effect of GW recoil by running for the first time a high-resolution cosmological simulation including GW recoil that depends on the MBH spins (evolved through accretion and mergers), masses and dynamics computed self-consistently. We also run a twin simulation without GW recoil. The simulations are run down to $z=4.4$. We find that GW recoil reduces the growth of merger remnants, and can have a significant effect on the MBH-galaxy correlations and the merger rate. We find large recoil kicks across all galaxy masses in the simulation, up to a few $10^{11}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$. The effect of recoil can be significant even if the MBHs are embedded in a rotationally supported gaseous structure. We investigate the dynamics of recoiling MBHs and find that MBHs remain in the centre of the host galaxy for low $v_{\mathrm{recoil}}/v_{\mathrm{esc}}$ and escape rapidly for high $v_{\mathrm{recoil}}/v_{\mathrm{esc}}$. Only if $v_{\mathrm{recoil}}$ is comparable to $v_{\mathrm{esc}}$ the MBHs escape the central region of the galaxy but might remain as wandering MBHs until the end of the simulation. Recoiling MBHs are a significant fraction of the wandering MBH population. Although the dynamics of recoiling MBHs may be complex, some retain their initial radial orbits but are difficult to discern from other wandering MBHs on radial orbits. Others scatter with the halo substructure or circularise in the asymmetric potential. Our work highlights the importance of including GW recoil in cosmological simulation models.

submitted to A&A

References in corpus (36)

• Large Merger Recoils and Spin Flips From Generic Black-Hole Binaries
• JADES. The diverse population of infant Black Holes at 4<z<11: merging, tiny, poor, but mighty
• Escape fraction of ionizing photons during reionization: effects due to supernova feedback and runaway OB stars
• Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence
• The dark nemesis of galaxy formation: why hot haloes trigger black hole growth and bring star formation to an end
• How Mergers May Affect The Mass Scaling Relations Between Black Holes, Galaxies, and Other Gravitationally Bound Systems
• Black Holes on FIRE: Stellar Feedback Limits Early Feeding of Galactic Nuclei
• Building Merger Trees from Cosmological N-body Simulations
• Ejection of Supermassive Black Holes from Galaxy Cores
• Introducing the NewHorizon simulation: Galaxy properties with resolved internal dynamics across cosmic time
• On the final spin from the coalescence of two black holes
• Dynamics of triple black hole systems in hierarchically merging massive galaxies
• A simple multigrid scheme for solving the Poisson equation with arbitrary domain boundaries
• The erratic dynamical life of black hole seeds in high-redshift galaxies
• Further insight into gravitational recoil
• Black hole mergers from dwarf to massive galaxies with the NewHorizon and Horizon-AGN simulations
• Gravitational recoil: signatures on the massive black hole population
• Recoiling black holes: electromagnetic signatures, candidates, and astrophysical implications
• The Obelisk simulation: galaxies contribute more than AGN to HI reionization of protoclusters
• Modeling gravitational recoil from precessing highly-spinning unequal-mass black-hole binaries
• The Origins of Off-Centre Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• Black hole evolution: II. Spinning black holes in a supernova-driven turbulent interstellar medium
• Retaining Black Holes with Very Large Recoil Velocities
• Formation of the largest galactic cores through binary scouring and gravitational wave recoil
• Signatures of the Many Supermassive Black Hole Mergers in a Cosmologically Forming Massive Early-Type Galaxy
• Massive Black Hole Binaries from the TNG50-3 Simulation: I. Coalescence and LISA Detection Rates
• Compaction-Driven Black Hole Growth
• Massive Black Hole Mergers with Orbital Information: Predictions from the ASTRID Simulation
• Modeling Gravitational Recoil Using Numerical Relativity
• Simulations of Recoiling Massive Black Holes in the Via Lactea Halo
• Massive black hole and gas dynamics in galaxy nuclei mergers. I. Numerical implementation
• Multimessenger study of merging massive black holes in the OBELISK simulation: gravitational waves, electromagnetic counterparts, and their link to galaxy and black hole populations
• The role of gravitational recoil in the assembly of massive black hole seeds
• Black hole mergers as tracers of spinning massive black hole and galaxy populations in the OBELISK simulation
• Cosmic evolution of black hole-spin and galaxy orientations: clues from the NewHorizon and Galactica simulations
• Identifying supermassive black hole recoil in elliptical galaxies

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Intermediate Mass Ratio Inspirals in Milky Way Galaxies
• Overmassive and Undermassive Massive Black Holes: The Role of Environment and Gravitational-Wave Recoils