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Rapid Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in Galaxy Mergers with Gas

the collision between two spiral galaxies.JPG (6.13 KiB) Viewed 45 times

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are a ubiquitous component of the nuclei of galaxies. It is normally assumed that after the merger of two massive galaxies, a SMBH binary will form, shrink because of stellar or gas dynamical processes, and ultimately coalesce by emitting a burst of gravitational waves. However, so far it has not been possible to show how two SMBHs bind during a galaxy merger with gas because of the difficulty of modeling a wide range of spatial scales. Here we report hydrodynamical simulations that track the formation of a SMBH binary down to scales of a few light years after the collision between two spiral galaxies.



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http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... /5833/1874