Rochester Institute of Technology | 2018 Feb 14
New study advances multimessenger astrophysics
A new simulation of supermassive black holes—the behemoths at the centers of galaxies—uses a realistic scenario to predict the light signals emitted in the surrounding gas before the masses collide, said Rochester Institute of Technology researchers.Click to play embedded YouTube video.
The RIT-led study represents the first step toward predicting the approaching merger of supermassive black holes using the two channels of information now available to scientists—the electromagnetic and the gravitational wave spectra—known as multimessenger astrophysics. ...
Unlike their less massive cousins, first detected in 2016, supermassive black holes are fed by gas disks that surround them like doughnuts. The strong gravitational pull of the black holes that inspiral toward one another heats and disrupts the flow of gas from disk to black hole and emits periodic signals in the visible to X-ray portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. ...
The simulation models supermassive black holes in a binary pair, each surrounded by its own gas disks. A much larger gas disk encircles the black holes and disproportionately feeds one mini-disk over another, leading to the filling-and-refilling cycle described in the paper. ...
Quasi-Periodic Behavior of Mini-Disks in Binary Black Holes Approaching Merger - Dennis B. Bowen et al
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 853(1):L17 (2018 Jan 20) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aaa756
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1712.05451 > 14 Dec 2017 (v1), 24 Jan 2018 (v2)