2025/05/21 by Cocco, Marta, Grignani, Gianluca, Harmark, Troels +2 · 4 citations
#Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.15901
Binary systems of compact objects in close orbit around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) may form in galactic nuclei, providing a unique environment to probe strong-gravity tidal effects on the binary's dynamics. In this work, we investigate precession resonances arising between the periastron precession frequency of a binary system and its orbital frequencies around the SMBH. By modeling the SMBH as a Schwarzschild black hole, we find that relativistic effects in the tidal field give rise to a significantly richer resonance spectrum compared to the Newtonian case. This result is supported by both perturbative and numerical analyses of the quadrupolar tidal interaction in the strong-gravity regime. Our results reveal new signatures for strong-gravity effects in such triple systems, with potential implications for gravitational-wave astronomy.