Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence

Abstract

Recent numerical relativistic simulations of black hole coalescence suggest that in certain alignments the emission of gravitational radiation can produce a kick of several thousand kilometers per second. This exceeds galactic escape speeds, hence unless there a mechanism to prevent this, one would expect many galaxies that had merged to be without a central black hole. Here we show that in most galactic mergers, torques from accreting gas suffice to align the orbit and spins of both black holes with the large-scale gas flow. Such a configuration has a maximum kick speed <200 km/s, safely below galactic escape speeds. We predict, however, that in mergers of galaxies without much gas, the remnant will be kicked out several percent of the time. We also discuss other predictions of our scenario, including implications for jet alignment angles and X-type radio sources.

referee's comments included, to appear in ApJL

References in corpus (9)

• Constraining Black Hole Spin Via X-ray Spectroscopy
• Large Merger Recoils and Spin Flips From Generic Black-Hole Binaries
• Total recoil: the maximum kick from nonspinning black-hole binary inspiral
• A Compact Supermassive Binary Black Hole System
• The influence of gas on the structure of merger remnants
• Getting a kick out of numerical relativity
• Gravitational Recoil during Binary Black Hole Coalescence using the Effective One Body Approach
• The evolution of misaligned accretion discs and spinning black holes
• GMRT observations of X-shaped radio sources

Cited by in corpus (34)

• Formation of z ~ 6 quasars from hierarchical galaxy mergers
• The Evolution of Black Hole Mass and Spin in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Ejection of Supermassive Black Holes from Galaxy Cores
• High-spin binary black hole mergers
• Mergers of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in Nuclear Star Clusters
• Anatomy of the binary black hole recoil: A multipolar analysis
• Modeling kicks from the merger of non-precessing black-hole binaries
• Gravitational Wave Recoil and the Retention of Intermediate Mass Black Holes
• Effects of gravitational-wave recoil on the dynamics and growth of supermassive black holes
• Prompt Shocks in the Gas Disk Around a Recoiling Supermassive Black Hole Binary
• Binary black hole mergers in gaseous disks: Simulations in general relativity
• Pre-Merger Localization of Gravitational-Wave Standard Sirens With LISA: Triggered Search for an Electromagnetic Counterpart
• Relativistic Suppression of Black Hole Recoils
• Final spins from the merger of precessing binary black holes
• Reaction of Accretion Disks to Abrupt Mass Loss During Binary Black Hole Merger
• Off-nuclear AGN as a signature of recoiling massive black holes
• Modelling the final state from binary black-hole coalescences
• Can binary mergers produce maximally spinning black holes?
• Retaining Black Holes with Very Large Recoil Velocities
• Black hole spin and radio loudness in a LCDM universe
• Gravitational Wave Recoil Oscillations of Black Holes: Implications for Unified Models of Active Galactic Nuclei
• Nuclear Black Hole Formation in Clumpy Galaxies at High Redshift
• Compact massive objects in Virgo galaxies: the black hole population
• Characterizing Spinning Black Hole Binaries in Eccentric Orbits with LISA
• Extreme recoils: impact on the detection of gravitational waves from massive black hole binaries
• Imprints of recoiling massive black-holes on the hot gas of early type galaxies
• The search for spinning black hole binaries in mock LISA data using a genetic algorithm
• Dynamics of Kicked and Accelerated Massive Black Holes in Galaxies
• Simulations of Recoiling Massive Black Holes in the Via Lactea Halo
• Gravitational Wave Signal from Assembling the Lightest Supermassive Black Holes
• The Final Merger of Black-Hole Binaries
• Examining subgrid models of supermassive black holes in cosmological simulation
• Radial structure, inflow & central mass of stationary radiative galaxy clusters
• Radio Bimodality: Spin, Accretion Mode, or Both?