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Black hole fueling and coalescence in galaxy mergers
Author(s) -
Valle Luciano,
Prieto Joaquín,
Escala Andrés
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
astronomische nachrichten
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.394
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1521-3994
pISSN - 0004-6337
DOI - 10.1002/asna.201913703
Subject(s) - physics , supermassive black hole , astrophysics , galaxy , coalescence (physics) , accretion (finance) , galaxy merger , gravitational wave , active galactic nucleus , smoothed particle hydrodynamics , black hole (networking) , astronomy , hotspot (geology) , galaxy formation and evolution , geophysics , computer network , routing protocol , routing (electronic design automation) , computer science , link state routing protocol
Abstract We study the gas accretion and orbital decay of super‐massive black hole (SMBH) pairs in the nuclear region of galaxy merger remnants, where a large amount of gas is expected to accumulate. For that purpose, we perform numerical simulations with both smooth particle hydro‐dynamics (SPH) (Gadget) and adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) (Ramses) techniques. We study the places of the highest SMBH gas accretion, finding that peaks of mass accretion rates are near pericenter passages. We also study the conditions for fast migration and coalescence of SMBHs in galactic nuclei, finding that, in the typical conditions of relatively wet mergers, the SMBHs will experience a fast shrinking, down to the scales where their final coalescence will be driven by the emission of gravitational waves, unless other processes strongly affect the distribution of the gas near the SMBH binary, such as active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback.