2024/08/23 by Jane C. Bright, Bright, Jane C., Tatsuya Akiba +3 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geotechnical and Geomechanical Engineering #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.13353
openalex publication_date 2024/08/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The M31 nucleus contains a supermassive black hole embedded in a massive stellar disk of apsidally-aligned eccentric orbits. It has recently been shown that this disk is slowly precessing at a rate consistent with zero. Here we demonstrate using N-body methods that apsidally-aligned eccentric disks can form with a significant (~0.5) fraction of orbits counter-rotating as the result of a gravitational wave recoil kick of merging supermassive black holes. Higher amplitude kicks map to a larger retrograde fraction in the surrounding stellar population which in turns results in slow precession. We furthermore show that disks with significant counter-rotation are more stable (that is, apsidal-alignment is most pronounced and long lasting), more eccentric, and have the highest rates of stars entering the black hole's tidal disruption radius