Spin alignment and differential accretion in merging black hole binaries

2015/03/31 by Davide Gerosa, Benedetta Veronesi, Giuseppe Lodato +1
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Angular momentum #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Black hole (networking) #Circumbinary planet #Classical mechanics #Galaxy #Gravitational wave #Intermediate-mass black hole #Mechanics and Biomechanics Studies #Neutron star #Nuclear physics #Physics #Precession #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Recoil #Spin-flip #Stars #Stellar black hole #Supermassive black hole #X-ray binary #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stv1214

published as Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 451 (2015) 3941-3954 · 14 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. MNRAS accepted version

openalex publication_date 2015/06/29 · arxiv created 2015/07/01 · arxiv updated 2016/05/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Interactions between a supermassive black hole binary and the surrounding accretion disc can both assist the binary inspiral and align the black hole spins to the disc angular momentum. While binary migration is due to angular-momentum transfer within the circumbinary disc, the spin-alignment process is driven by the mass accreting on to each black hole. Mass transfer between different disc components thus couples the inspiral and the alignment process together. Mass is expected to leak through the cavity cleared by the binary, and preferentially accretes on to the lighter (secondary) black hole which orbits closer to the disc edge. Low accretion rate on to the heavier (primary) black hole slows the alignment process down. We revisit the problem and develop a semi-analytical model to describe the coupling between gas-driven inspiral and spin alignment, finding that binaries with mass ratio q ≲ 0.2 approach the gravitational-wave driven inspiral in differential misalignment: light secondaries prevent primaries from aligning. Binary black holes with misaligned primaries are ideal candidates for precession effects in the strong-gravity regime and may suffer from moderately large (∼1500 km s−1) recoil velocities.

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