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The accretion disks that fuel active galactic nuclei (AGN) may house numerousstars and compact objects, formed in situ or captured from nearby starclusters. Embedded neutron stars and black holes may form binaries andeventually merge, emitting gravitational waves detectable by LIGO/VIRGO. AGNdisks are a particularly promising environment for the production of high-massgravitational wave events involving black holes in the pair instability massgap, and may facilitate electromagnetic counterparts to black hole binarymergers. However, many orders of magnitude separate the typical length scalesof binary formation and those on which gravitational waves can drive binaryinspirals, making binary mergers inside the disk uncertain. Previoushydrodynamical simulations of binaries have either been restricted to twodimensions entirely, or focused on binaries aligned with the midplane of thedisk. Herein we present the first three-dimensional, high-resolution, localshearing-box hydrodynamical simulations of disk-embedded binaries over a rangeof orbital inclinations. We find that retrograde binaries can shrink up to fourtimes as quickly as prograde binaries, and that all binaries not perfectlyaligned (or anti-aligned) with the AGN disk are driven into alignment. Animportant consequence of this is that initially retrograde binaries willtraverse the inclinations where von Zeipel-Lidov-Kozai oscillations can drivebinary eccentricities to large values, potentially facilitating mergers. Wealso find that interactions with the AGN disk may excite eccentricities inretrograde binaries and cause the orbits of embedded binaries to precess.

The Evolution of Inclined Binary Black Holes in the Disks of Active Galactic Nuclei